Frigid
by Child of Loki
Summary: When LaSalle requests a week off for a fishing trip with some old buddies, his fellow agents aren't buying the story. Growing more and more concerned by his uncharacteristically icy behavior, Brody takes it upon herself to figure out what her partner is up to, and to help him, whether he likes it or not.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: New Orleans or its characters…**

**Author's Note: This little scenario has been brewing for a while, but after seeing the preview for the new episode this week, I decided the overall plot of this one couldn't be driven by Cade getting into trouble, since the canon would surely contradict my playing. So there's a different mystery surrounding LaSalle getting into trouble, and subsequently taking Brody with him.**

* * *

There was no reason for her heart to be beating like a thoroughbred's hooves against the track during the Kentucky Derby. Because even though Meredith Brody hadn't been keeping a precise count, the agent would swear to having cleared at least a couple hundred premises during her career in law enforcement. And come on, there had to be at least a dozen commercial kitchens included in there... right?

But god, none so creepy.

Of course the light switch had failed, and there was only the beam of her flashlight and the ominous green glow of various appliances sporting clocks and the like. And if this was a horror movie instead of her real life, she would've been shouting at the stupid woman exploring the dark back of the currently closed bar to get the hell out of there and call for backup. But Merri wasn't some vapid character in a slasher flick. She was simply a federal agent who'd been concerned about her partner, had sort of been following him -no, um, keeping an eye out for him, because as LaSalle and Pride were fond of pointing out, they were 'family'. So it was perfectly natural that seeing through his nonchalant request for a few days off to go fishing with some old buddies, she would be concerned.

Pride, of course, had seen through the younger man's cover story as well. She would've been severely worried about the veteran agent if he had bought his good friend's tale of his leaving an open case for a fun, carefree week with friends. But when pressed on the subject, Pride sighed, said LaSalle had told him in confidence that it was a 'family matter'. She'd argued that they were always saying the close-knit NCIS agents were family, but apparently not in this case. It'd been obvious that Cade was stressing his brother out over the past few weeks, but this was different. She'd seen it in his eyes, in his posture, the tone of his voice. The problems with his brother manifested in a sort of bone-deep, weariness that was more sadness than anxiety. Over the past week, LaSalle's behavior had been distracted, jumpy and nervous even.

So she'd been keeping tabs on the man in as subtle a way as she could, even recruiting Patton's help (bribing him with promises that she'd be 'wingwoman' in some elaborate ploy he had for getting in with this one lady that had been playing hard to get) to digitally track LaSalle so she wouldn't have to get so close as to be caught. Because, despite playing the Dimwitted Southern Boy on occasion, the man was a wily creature. And a liar. He'd been bouncing all about the parish, but none of those locations were remotely fishing holes. And none of the persons she'd spotted him with were the 'good ol' boy' fishing buddy type, if one could judge from the gravity of their interactions... And their unsavoriness.

_What the hell have you gotten yourself into, LaSalle?_

Had he gone here, into the dark restaurant to meet yet another shady character? About what? Had there been an argument? There were no signs of a struggle, but it had been three hours since Patton had pinged his phone at the location... And there was no sign of life at all from the dark building. The last four days, she'd been playing it cool, keeping her distance, trying to gather up evidence, she supposed, before confronting the man with the lies he'd told her and Pride. But, truthfully, she'd been feeling guilty about, well, basically stalking him. Almost as guilty as she was concerned.

"LaSalle?" Creepy as it was in that place, she had to battle her primal instincts to be quiet, to go unseen by the lethal sort of creatures that prowled in the dark in order to call out for her partner, who she knew must be somewhere in the pitch black depths of the building himself. His truck was still parked outside. He had to be here. Unless he'd left with someone else, willing or... "Anyone in here? LaSalle?"

There was a blue glow coming from around the corner in the back of the kitchen. Slowly, carefully, Merri made her way towards it, abruptly swinging around the corner, gun first. It was the walk-in freezer. Someone had left a light on in the cold storage room. She knew from her waitressing days in college that it wasn't standard procedure. With a feeling of dread, as if a half-decayed skeleton or an axe-wielding maniac might jump out at her at any moment, she slowly -very slowly, like .000003 miles per hour- approached the little circular glass window that was aglow with florescent light.

She swallowed down the knot in her throat before peering in through the frosted glass. There were metal shelves crammed with nondescript containers, boxes, tubs, aluminum and freezer paper wrapped packages. And against the far wall, a dark figure, lying slumped on the floor. It was a familiar shape despite its boneless posture, wearing familiar clothes. The latch was tricky, and she fumbled with it frantically as she panicked, trying to get the heavy door open. Finally, she yanked it free and heaved on the thick, insulated door, throwing it open and dashing desperately to the man lying unmoving on the cold tile floor, slipping slightly on the icy ceramic as she slid onto her knees beside him, reaching for his shoulder to shake him.

"LaSalle! Come on. Wake up." Oh, god, he'd frozen to death. He'd succumbed to hypothermia while she was staying back, trying not to meddle, to stick her nose into her partner's business more than she already had. Why? Because she wouldn't like it if he'd done the same to her. But where did that get anyone? They were supposed to have each other's back, and she'd let him down.

"Brody?" His drawl was even thicker, slower than usual as his head rolled back and he blinked sluggishly, his dark blue eyes trying to focus on her face.

"Hey, partner," She smiled, feeling overwhelmingly relieved. "What happened? Couldn't find the fudgsicles and decided to just lie down and die?"

"Nah." LaSalle made a pathetic sort of noise, not one of pain, but maybe of stunted frustration, as if he were bemoaning the sluggish state of his hypothermic body. "Choco Tacos or bust."

She laughed a little.

"Let's get you out of here. And maybe when you're all warmed up, and if you behave yourself at the hospital, I'll buy out an entire ice cream truck." With a little effort -the disoriented man wasn't much help- she snaked her hands beneath his arms, dismayed to find that the notable warm spot on any person's body was actually cool to the touch. And when she lifted up, trying to coax him to find his feet, she discovered that he'd also lost control of his extremities, definitely his legs, maybe even his arms. He was a dead weight. And although not a large man, he was heavier than she could lift unassisted.

Alright, then.

"I'm going to get help, okay?" His eyes were closed again. She squeezed his arm and he gave her a half-focused glance, which she realized was the only acknowledgement she was going to receive.

Pulling out her phone, she turned around to find that the door on the freezer had closed behind her, sending a brief flit of panic through her chest. But, again, those years spent waitressing reassured her that there was always a release latch on the inside for safety reasons, such as this situation. Only... she realized as she approached the sealed door, why hadn't LaSalle used it. The outer latch had been sticky, but not locked. And, oh shit.

The safety release was completely broken off...

* * *

**A/N: What's LaSalle up to? Was it just by accident that he was trapped in the freezer? How will they get out?**

**A/N2: Haven't quite decided which genre this will be... whether it will be 'Cherri' (shippy) or not...**


	2. Chapter 2

**Warning: Minor Coarse Language.**

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Okay. The key in situations such as these was not to panic. _Don't panic_. So what if you were trapped in a giant freezer? And your partner was hypothermic? And you didn't have any cell phone service?

No need to panic. Right?

Right.

Just approach this logically. Priorities.

1.) Getting out of the fucking freezer!

2.) Make sure LaSalle was okay.

The sooner they got help, the better, for solving both problems. Therefore, Merri needed to be absolutely certain there was no cell phone service. Easily done. She began at one corner of the sealed and_ really _cold space and systematically covered the entire freezer, staring at the screen of her phone, willing the little bars to appear. Just one. Just one so a call would get through. They didn't even need to understand her words, if only she could call someone. Pride or Patton, and they'd check her phone when they couldn't call her back, figure out where she was. Just one bar. C'mon.

After several minutes, when she looked up to suddenly see a wall in front of her once more, Merri tried not to freak out entirely. She swallowed down the panic. Because there was no need to panic, right? She had her priorities, she knew what she had to do. Calling for help via cell phone was not going to work. So she just needed to figure out another way. But the next priority was to check on LaSalle. From what she'd seen, he was _not_ in good shape. He needed a hospital, with special thermal blankets and warm saline and whatever the hell they used to resuscitate hypothermia victims.

"LaSalle?" She tried getting his attention, saying his name several times, but whereas his response before was sluggish, it was now practically non-existent.

Guess it was time to share.

She couldn't selfishly hog all of her body heat to herself, now could she? Although, even hypothermic, the man was still producing some of his own, and cuddling up to his body would trap more, probably be more beneficial to herself, too, than letting her warmth be sapped away by the cold air. He was sitting slumped against the wall, and it was hard to say whether the floor or the wall might be colder, but she didn't risk laying him down upon the tile which might only sap the remaining heat from him faster. She should really probably lie down on the floor herself and pull him on top of her, serve as a barrier between him and the frozen surface. But that would increase the rate at which she'd become hypothermic, and one of them needed to remain coherent if they were going to survive.

So, instead, she simply knelt, straddling his legs, unzipped his jacket, burrowed her hands and arms beneath the fabric, around his torso and pressed herself up tight against him. She buried her face into the hollow at the base of his neck and exhaled her hot breath into the collar of his t-shirt, letting it be absorbed by the fabric. God, he was cold, like a fucking corpse. But no, he couldn't be that cold. It wasn't physically possible if he were still alive, which she knew he was, because she could feel the slow beating of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest against hers, at about half-time to hers, but still there.

But if his abdomen was this cool to the touch, then his extremities must be even worse. Did he have frostbite? Could one get frostbite in a restaurant's walk-in freezer? Should she check his fingers and toes? She reached out blindly searching for his bare hands, starting when she realized they were like ice before pulling them in to nestle them between their bodies. Some warmth built between them, the trapped air heating marginally, but Brody knew it wouldn't last. Remaining idle would doom them both.

But if the freezer was functional, then the restaurant must be operational, and if not open during the day, then perhaps it just had night hours, and staff would soon to be in to prep and find their unwilling guests... hopefully not in popsicle form.

"LaSalle?" she patted the side of his face gently, trying to rouse him from the hypothermic delirium. There were really worse ways to go. It was easy to assume that death was death. Either way, the end result was that you no longer existed. But working the job she did... Merri Brody knew some deaths were worse than others, more painful, more lingering, filling a person's last few moments with agony and terror. Dying from exposure, from hypothermia, was supposed to be just like going to sleep. After a while, you didn't even feel the cold anymore. Definitely one of the more peaceful ways to go, in her opinion.

That is, if you _had_ to go.

And frankly, she'd rather not at the moment, having just settled into a city she liked, an office she liked, with people she didn't want to punch in the face... well, most of the time anyway. Whatever shit LaSalle had gotten himself into... As soon as he was warmed up, she was going to get the whole story, the truth, even if she had to beat it out of him.

He whimpered, very softly, and she immediately forgot her anger. The man was currently just too pathetic for her to maintain her vexation with him. Later, though...

"LaSalle, do you know when this place opens?" He blinked at her, his dark blue eyes unfocused. It was entirely incoherent, but it sounded as if he was trying to respond to her, so she did all she could think of to keep him awake, rubbing his hands and his neck. She wound up pinching the sensitive skin of his throat, and he flinched, jumping a little, a normal response that eased her worry slightly.

"When does the restaurant open?" she asked once more, when his eyes finally settled onto her face with a little glimmer of the intelligence they normally possessed. _Welcome back, Christopher LaSalle_.

"Tuesday."

Maybe he'd misunderstood the question. Maybe she'd given his brain too much credit for its supposed rebound from the literally _icy _clutches of death.

"Owners on vacation."

_Shit._

Okay. Priority 1.) Get out of the fucking freezer! still not resolved. Not even remotely resolved.

_Think, Merri. Think._

Maybe her brain was becoming sluggish, the cold environment slowing down the particles of grey matter that apparently were sloshing about her head, likely currently the consistency of a slushie. Brain freeze was imminent, wasn't it?

Falling asleep wasn't a terrible away to go. And she wouldn't even be alone, either. She could just curl up here against the solid, reassuring form of her friend, and call it a day.

Except, she didn't actually want to do that. And neither did LaSalle. At least, he'd never seemed a quitter. He was just a little incapacitated at the moment. And she couldn't really blame him. She was already beginning to shiver violently, but his body was unsettling placid. He'd probably fought, to keep his cool (no pun intended), to refrain from panicking, tried to call for help, figure a way to get out of there. Unless...

She pulled back from her mostly incoherent charge, regretting the release of the body heat that had been trapped between them as she examined the man for physical injury. He wasn't bruised or bleeding.

"Are you hurt at all?" He'd drifted off again. "Chris!"

That got his attention.

"Are you hurt?"

"Cold," he said. Well, that was good. At least he still felt it.

"Anything else?" She asked, wondering how he'd ended up locked in the freezer. Oh, she'd duped him on several occasions, but the man wasn't stupid. And he was a fighter. "How'd you wind up in here?"

"Uh..." He closed his eyes tight, wincing, as if the attempt to remember hurt. "That bastard musta clocked me in the back o' the head."

She ran her fingers over his scalp, found a lump at the base of his skull. Well that explained that. Sort of. Who was the bastard? And why were he and LaSalle in the closed restaurant?

Those were probably questions for later.

"What happened next?" she asked, hoping that keeping him thinking would prevent him from falling unconscious again. Also, if she could avoid making futile attempts to escape that he'd already tried, that would save them time and energy.

"You were shoutin' in my face."

Well, then maybe he wasn't hypothermic, just concussed and very cold. She definitely needed to keep him awake. He could've died from brain swelling already as it was, if she hadn't stupidly gone searching for him and gotten herself locked in the freezer, too.

God, what an idiot! Sometimes, she felt as dumb as a brick. Mistakes. Why did she always seem to make mistakes under pressure? Pride and LaSalle would probably try to convince her that she'd come through an innumerable number of times, had always been there for them, but the few times she'd faltered, hesitated or misjudged in her life, they stuck with her, vivid in her memory. And here was another one to add to the pile. Getting herself locked in a fucking freezer. LaSalle at least had the excuse of being rendered unconscious and stashed in the sealed room. She hadn't needed the assistance of whatever _bastard _her partner was referring to. She just did it for him.

Oh, god. It was fucking cold. Her teeth had begun to chatter uncontrollably, and she instinctively gravitated back to the warmest thing in the room, the body of her partner. It was a little more awkward now that he was somewhat coherent, but she was too damned cold to care as she wrapped her arms around him, snuggling beneath his jacket and hugging him, pressing herself tight to him.

It was a little embarrassing how quickly she found herself susceptible to the cold. She was from the Mid-West for god's sake. This was tepid by their winter standards. Only, she wouldn't be out in the dead of winter in dress pants, blouse and a light jacket. Everyone would be bundled up, working hard outside, or if standing still, gathered around a roaring fire with a cup of hot cocoa in hand. Or better yet, on a very cold night, inside by the crackling fire... _Fire_.

That just might work...


	3. Chapter 3

Meredith Brody could only see one way out of this frozen tomb. Well, besides waiting and praying that someone found them before they froze to death. Patton knew where she'd gone, after all, right? Only... She hadn't even hinted that he should send in the cavalry if he didn't hear from her in a certain amount of time, or that she intended to check in with him at all. He'd only been giving her intel on LaSalle's movements. As far as she'd let on, that was all she was interested in so far, wasn't doing anything more, like tracking the wayward agent down and getting trapped in a freezer with him.

So, it was down to her.

Which suited her fine anyway. Slowly, she'd been learning to not only trust others, but to rely on them. But to be perfectly honest, she still was a do-it-yourself sort of person. And that perhaps _stubborn _independence would likely always be a part of her. Possibly a significant part of her, no matter how certain in the knowledge she was that her newfound New Orleans family would have her back.

And so, it was down to her.

Only, she was finding it difficult to convince herself to leave her likely concussed and comparatively warm (to the cold, cold air of the freezer, anyway) partner. Maybe it was her own body heat thawing him out, but LaSalle seemed to have come around a bit more, was no longer responding in low, incoherent mumbles and sluggish eye contact. Not that she could look him in the eyes with her face buried his neck. He smelled rather pleasant, comforting. Earthy and a little bit smoky, like a smoored fire.

So maybe just another minute more. Just one.

She needed to know the whole scope of the situation, anyway. Whether there might actually be other people in the building, individuals who meant LaSalle and therefore herself, harm. Her Hail Mary plan might not get them anywhere, after all.

"What were you doing here, anyway, LaSalle?" She asked, shifting just slightly so that she could speak quietly into his ear... after she forced her teeth to stop chattering together.

"Meetin' an old friend." Merri was surprised to hear his response. She really hadn't expected to give her even an inch when it came to whatever mess he'd gotten himself into this past week or so.

"Friend?"

LaSalle chuckled feebly. "Yeah, not quite the 'friend' I thought he was."

"No kidding." Her nose was cold from the exposure, so she buried it against his warm neck once more. His arms wrapped about her, hugged her tight, a sigh expanding his chest against hers.

"But I can pick some good 'uns, too."

"That remains to be seen." She only meant it as a self-effacing comment, but when his relaxed body went rigid and his arms fell away from her back, Merri knew she'd inadvertently insulted her friend. Because yes, she considered him a friend. It was her quality in serving such a role that was in question.

"Tell you what," she said, reluctantly pulling her arms out from around her enticingly warm partner's middle, placing a palm on his cool cheek. "I'm going to prove that you have excellent taste in friends by getting us the hell out of here."

She struggled to get to her feet, LaSalle's hands reaching out to steady her. Apparently, she had been cuddled up to the man for too long, for her legs had gone all tingly and stiff. She hobbled the first few steps on her second full survey of the walk-in freezer. There was no telling what the specific zoning codes were used in this part of New Orleans. But Merri had a hunch from her somewhat successful waitressing career (paid her way through college, at least, something it would no longer do no matter how a young woman flirted for tips). That restaurant had been required to have fully functional fire alarm systems, mandating smoke detectors in every enclosed space, including walk-in freezers. It seemed strange that a fire could start in an atmosphere hovering below 32 degrees Fahrenheit... but cold didn't mean damp... and some very combustible materials could be stored in freezing temperatures.

And there it was, in the corner. It even had a sprinkler head attachment... Oh wait, that would probably be unpleasant. Wet in frigid temperatures. Not something she would ever look forward to, but the alternative was lying down and dying. Which although it was likely a nice way to go if one had to, wrapped up in the comforting arms of her warm partner, breathing in the cozy cottage scent of him, Meredith Brody was going to opt to pass on that one this time.

Because she had been a girl scout for twelve years, she naturally had a book of waterproof matches in her pocket. The question was how to get a good enough blaze going that would set off the alarm system (which would have to be linked to emergency services of some sort...hopefully). Preferably the fire would also be one that burned out fast, before it sucked all the oxygen out of the air-tight room.

She turned a complete circle on her heal, catching LaSalle's curious-bordering-on-bewildered look and giving him a wink before she headed over to one of the stocked metal shelves and began pawing through the frosty contents. Too much frost would be bad. Freezing air wasn't necessarily _moist_ but frost _was _justfrozen water. Here, some brittle but dry cardboard. She emptied out the box' contents, prepackaged patties of some sort. The butcher's paper was promising, so she took a handful of those parcels, blowing on her fingers and rubbing her hands together as she unwrapped them and deposited the solid blocks of red meat in a pile. Hell, they maybe could have a barbecue while they were at it. Getting some more calories into them would give their bodies more fuel to burn to stay warm, after all... Not that it would be necessary if her plan worked.

LaSalle's wide blue eyes continued to study her as curiously as a small child watching an adult perform a task they'd never witnessed before, observing, trying to figure out the purpose of it.

"Hungry?" she asked, plopping onto her carnivore's collection a massive doorstop of rib-eye steak. Wasn't it a sin to freeze those? She was no connoisseur of red meat, but she was pretty sure those who enjoyed such a cut preferred them fresh.

"I may not be _civilized_, but I ain't 'bout ta gnaw on a raw hunk o' meat like a mad dog."

She laughed. It was nice to fall into their old rhythm, the banter distracted her from the seriousness of the situation, from the fact that she was in actuality a little peeved at her partner for his rogue behavior, and from the fact that her fingers were _so fucking cold_.

Rolling up the cardboard and stuffing the paper inside, some torn ends sticking out the top, she fashioned a torch. Hopefully, it would be enough so that she wouldn't have to build a bonfire up in the sealed and heavily insulated space.

It took three matches burned down to her numb fingers, but eventually the paper caught, and she climbed up one of the shelving units to stand just a foot or so higher, gritting her teeth when the cheap metal swayed against her movement until she felt stable enough to reach up and put the flame directly under the smoke detector, saying a vehement prayer to whatever god would listen to her.

She let out the breath she'd been holding when a piercing alarm began to cut through the silent building. And just a split-second behind, the sprinkler system went off, a rainstorm to accompany the shrill thunder cutting through the small room. At least, the tepid water felt gloriously warm compared to the regulated frigid temperature of the freezer.

"What now?" LaSalle shouted over the ear-piercing drone of the alarm. He'd clambered to his feet, wobbling slightly and requiring Merri's assistance to stand upright. As soon as they were out of here, she was going to insist upon his getting an MRI, just to be sure that head wound wasn't deceptively serious.

"Some burly fireman break down that door," she said, exuding confidence she did not remotely feel.

_Please, please work_.

She might just go deaf from the alarm, and develop a splitting headache, but she would take it, if it meant they wouldn't die in this damned freezer. What an embarrassing end that would be. Trapped in a fucking freezer. No. No way.

Besides, she still had to get the truth out of LaSalle. Because after this, she was definitely _not _letting his little 'off the books' investigation, or whatever the hell he'd been up to, slide. But she could wait, instead of trying to shout over the din and have him play deaf and dumb. She would stand there, under the cool-but-thankfully-not-freezing spray of water, an arm around her partner's waist and his hand resting on her shoulder for support as he swayed on his feet. No, she'd make sure he was taken to the hospital, then when he was all drugged up for the pain -because from what she could tell, that scalp wound would require at least a few stitches- she would pounce.

Maybe it would be better if her plan didn't work and they remained trapped in the closed restaurant's freezer. Because Meredith Brody was an interrogation expert.

The poor bastard didn't stand a chance.

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**A/N: I know, I know. Enough with the trapped-in-the-freezer whatnot! Promise it won't be dragged out any further and we'll get some more of the main LaSalle plot in the next chapter. This story is looking to be all from Brody-centric, however.**


	4. Chapter 4

"Agent Brody, a word."

Uh-oh. Like when her mother had employed her full name during Merri's childhood -first, middle _and_ last- Pride only stood on such formality with his underlings when he was feeling reprimand-y. She decided not to play into the trap and merely rose an inquiring eyebrow after following him out of the antiseptic smelling room into the equally reeking hospital hallway.

"I know you're concerned, but it's not wise to press him like this."

Was he serious? Well, of course he was. Pride always said what he meant, and meant what he said. And there was no way he wasn't as worried about LaSalle as she was. If anything, the man who was more even than friend and mentor to the younger agent had to be far more curious and concerned than the comparative newcomer to their team, their _family_. So why wasn't he using every means at his disposal -loyalty, respect, friendship- to get the truth out of the troubled (and troublesome) agent?

"He got himself locked in a freezer, Pride," she said, still studying her boss intently, a futile attempt to discern the reason why he was backing off and telling her to do so also. The worry was apparent in the features of his face, but without revealing any motivation for his urging her withdrawal.

"Well..." Pride chuckled. "Technically, so did you."

She scoffed.

"He would have _died_ if I hadn't been worried about him, hadn't pressed matters." Merri was trying to keep her cool. But this whole situation just wasn't making sense. LaSalle was a team player, as loyal, friendly and open as the day was long. And Pride was a Mother Hen type if she'd ever meant one. For the younger agent to go off and start messing with something obviously dangerous without telling his friend, and then for said 'friend' to not do everything in his power to help his surrogate son... what the _hell_ was going on?

"That may be so, but pressing him for answers, like he were some sort of suspect rather than a friend..." Pride pinned her with his all-business look. "It won't get us anywhere. He'll only shut us out."

"More than he already has?" Honestly, she didn't mean to be giving the older agent attitude. It's just... he should be on _her_ side in this. Not that there were 'sides', of course.

"Christopher may seem like a straightforward, all of his cards out on the table, sort of guy," Pride said. "But he's got secrets, like any normal person, more even than any normal person. An' he keeps 'em buried deep."

"I appreciate that you two are close," Merri said, finally accepting the situation, odd though she found it, and switching gears into trying to convince Pride to let her attempt to pry the truth our of their team mate. "And that you are trying to respect LaSalle's boundaries and choices. But are you willing to risk his life just to maintain your easy friendship?"

Pride stared at her in a way that was almost a glare, obviously recognizing that she'd switched the focus of her interrogatory nature upon him. He frowned.

"You won't be much of a friend to him if he's dead," she said.

Pride sighed.

"Fine. Do what ya want, Brody. I'm just tryin' to warn ya, that he's not gonna respond well. He'll push you away. And then he'll run."

"I'm good at running," she said. "I'll chase him down and tackle him to the ground and physically restrain him if I have to."

"I don't doubt it," Pride said, a small smile creeping up on his face. "But then you'll have to break him, to get him to talk. An' he don't break easy."

"I'm not losing anyone else," she said before turning on her heel and marching back into the hospital room more determined than ever. There had been too many lives lost, ones that she'd been responsible for.

LaSalle was lying where she'd left him in his hospital bed, but his eyes were closed, his head listing to one side against the pillow that he was propped up against. Whether he was asleep or just feigning it, Merri didn't care. The nurses had to come in to wake him up every fifteen minutes anyhow... Possibly Severe Concussion watch. It was hard saying how long the conversation with Pride had lasted. Likely only a few minutes, but it had felt like forever, what with all of the tension. Either way, she decided to help the nurses out.

Taking Pride's advice, albeit not in its entirety, she placed her hand on LaSalle's face and proceeded to gently caress his cheek. She had let her temper flare a little earlier, was playing 'I'm so worried about you that I'm very pissed off' perhaps with too much accuracy. So, why not try some 'good cop' this time?

She said his name in as gentle a tone as she could contrive. It was difficult, because, yes, she was still quite upset. Perhaps it wasn't all out of a protectiveness she felt for her newfound family and its members. Perhaps, it was because she was angry, and sort of really wanted to find a release for that anger. Someone had tried to hurt her friend, and coincidentally, herself. And she maybe wanted a little payback. So first, she needed to know _who_ she could track down and kick their ass. Which she needed LaSalle to tell her.

"Brody?" He blinked up at her, his eyes focusing slowly on her face. She gave him a genuine smile. Okay, she wasn't a complete lost cause because she did feel quite relieved to see that he was okay, that he'd thawed out and was doing better. And there. There was his stupid little boy grin.

"I'm in the hospital?"

"Yes. Remember? You have a concussion." She took his hand, squeezing his fingers. It was a little unnerving that he seemed to go in and out of a delirium, sometimes not remembering the past day. The doctor said it should be temporary, that he'd likely suffered minor swelling but it should rectify itself without surgical intervention. And they _were_ monitoring him. But still... She felt a little guilty for being so short the last time she'd questioned him about the mess he'd gotten into.

"How'd that happen?"

He looked at her with confused, big blue eyes and she found herself squeezing his hand just a little harder. She'd almost lost him.

"Someone hit you in the back of the head." He blinked, his brow furrowing in concentration. Poor thing. "You went to a pub, The Cobble &amp; Crest, to meet someone..."

The prompting didn't appear to work, for he frowned, looking more thoughtful, and then shook his head and released an exaggerated sigh. Chris LaSalle was good at charming people, but playing possum was apparently not a strength of his.

Brody abruptly dropped his hand and glared. _Poor thing? _Poor thing _my ass_.

"You liar. You remember everything perfectly well, don't you, LaSalle?"

"Whoa now, Brody." He threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. As if that would pacify her. As if his lying concussed in a hospital bed with half a dozen stitches holding the back of his head together would earn her sympathy. "I don't rightly know what you're talkin' about. Things are jus' a li'l hazy for me at the moment. I'm sorry."

Argh!

"No. You. don't." Without even thinking about it, she jabbed him in the chest with her finger, punctuating every word she ground out between gritted teeth. "You listen to me, Chris LaSalle. You're going to tell me what's going on with you. And you're going to tell me before you leave this room."

His expression changed from faux bewildered to that seriously intense one she knew so well. And secretly found absolutely captivating. But not this time. This time, it was issuing her a challenge, as in 'how the hell did she think she could keep him from doing whatever the fuck he wanted?'

"I'll be confiscating your clothing from the nurse," she said with a malicious grin brandishing a plastic bag housing the patient's belongings.. "You know, it being _evidence_ and all."

LaSalle scowled, picking at the neck of the scratchy hospital gown as he stared at her. Suddenly, Merri found herself in the midst of a battle of wills, a staring contest that put even the most stubborn, reticent, sociopathic suspects to shame.

LaSalle was not the type to back down. And neither was Merri Brody.

"This ain't none of your concern, Brody." Her partner, her supposed _friend's_ tone was dangerously flat. It was a rarity that found Chris LaSalle so serious. And generally that was never a good thing, especially for the person or persons in his way.

He hadn't blinked yet. And there was no way she was letting him win this round, too. No way.

"I thought..." She trailed off when her opponent's gaze slid away from her, towards the doorway, towards the corridor, in which stood an unfamiliar figure talking to Pride. Well, not entirely unfamiliar. Merri thought that maybe she recognized him from some of the surveillance she'd had done on LaSalle over the past week. But damn, the man was leaving. She glanced back at LaSalle, who looked very pale, as he turned back towards her, an anxious expression on his face.

"Gimme my clothes." He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the hospital bed.

"No way," she said. "You stay here, rest. I'll go see if Pride knows what that was all about. Unless there's something you want to tell me?"

LaSalle glared at her, and began to stand, grabbing the edge of the bed for support, apparently still too dizzy or too weak for the activity. She pushed him gently, causing him to fall back onto the narrow mattress, and then swiftly bent down, grabbed his legs and deposited them back on the bed.

"Stay."

He huffed and glared some more as she left him confined to his sick bed, taking his clothes with her.

Fine.

If he didn't want to tell her the truth, then little Chrissy LaSalle wasn't allowed to go out and play with the other kids.

* * *

**A/N: Oops… that didn't answer any questions, did it? I'm really bad at drawing this out, aren't I? I sort of just get carried away with the narrative. Hopefully the reveals will come soon… Who was the mystery man? Why did his presence upset LaSalle? And what the hell has the agent been up to?**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: I hadn't forgotten about this one…**

**Warning: Some Coarse Language**

* * *

"Who was that?"

Pride looked uncharacteristically indecisive, and so Merri glared, just to let him know how angry she would be if he opted to prevaricate, or just to say nothing at all.

"_That_ was Christopher's ex-partner from his NOPD Vice days."

Merri raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but her boss seemed unwilling to elucidate further.

"And...?" Merri asked. The older man clammed up, giving her a warning look. "Really? You and LaSalle. You're all just talk, aren't you? _Team-this, and Family-that_. But you both still consider me an outsider, don't you? Agent Brody can't possible understand. She isn't one of us. Is that what you both think?!"

Wow. Where had that come from? Merri hadn't realized this whole situation with LaSalle had affected her so profoundly on an emotional level.

Pride frowned. "I'm sorry you feel like we been keepin' you out, Brody. Believe me, it wasn't intentional. And you know we _do_ consider you family. Me an' Chris. Loretta an' Sebastian, too."

"Then just tell me what's going on, Pride." There was more whine in her tone than she would've liked. But she was going crazy. Absolutely insane. She was a woman who liked to get things done, to resolve problems. But that was impossible when she didn't have all the facts, and no matter how hard she tried, couldn't glean them. She had never been so thwarted. And to top it all off, it was her own friends that were blocking her.

Pride sighed, looking genuinely remorseful. "It's not my place."

His gaze slid to the open door, the hospital room that held their troubled fellow agent and friend.

She growled in pure frustration, threw the bag containing LaSalle's clothes at Pride's chest, which he caught with a shocked expression on his face, and then she marched out of the hospital without looking back.

She honestly couldn't remember being so... so furious. Frustration, hurt and anger formed a tumultuous storm raging inside of her. She had a splitting headache and a pain in her stomach that was probably a nascent ulcer. To hell with it. To hell with them.

Fucking Pride and LaSalle, spouting off about being a cohesive unit, a tight-knit team that had each other's backs, a family that took care of one another no matter what. But as soon as it was a 'personal' matter, one involving stupid male pride, they were all hands-off, every man for himself.

Brody poured herself a glass of merlot, tried to read a bit of the book club recommended novel, a poignant tale of a conflicted female protagonist who overcomes a desperate battle with ennui... bourgeois bullshit. She didn't have the patience for it. She tossed it directly onto the floor, opened the cupboard that housed her secret stash of trashy romance paperbacks, pulled a couple out, selected the one with a bare-chested cowboy, cracked the yard-sale acquisition's spine along a well-worn crease, and escaped her stupid life, falling asleep only a few pages in.

She dreamed that she was a secret Pinkerton operative sent into a camp town in Colorado, on behalf of the interests of a larger mining consortium, to investigate one of the locals with a small mining claim who the company was branding a dangerous malcontent. After the consortium's man was found lying face-down in the mud, beaten half to death, it was also noticed that the ruffian had disappeared. She tracked him into the mountains, was chasing him down when a snowstorm hit, and she found herself holed up with the man in a dense stand of cedar against the inclement whether, cuddling up to him for warmth, wondering what his secrets were…

Merri awoke on the couch with the taste of stale wine in her mouth, the paperback novel lying open on her chest, and an overwhelming feeling of shame. And guilt. LaSalle was going through something, trying to face whatever troubles had befallen him, entirely on his own. And she'd abandoned him, just given up because he was being a little stubborn. _Please_. She could out-stubborn him any day of the week. She'd given up too easily.

A glance at the clock informed her that it was only 7pm. She'd slept through the afternoon, but there was one source she hadn't tried yet (which had been stupid of her to overlook so far) that she knew would be available at this precise hour. So Merri staggered to the bathroom, disoriented by her heavy sleep and with her headache still throbbing in her temples, and popped a few ibuprofen before brushing her teeth and straightening her rumpled clothing. She gave her underarm a quick sniff, and decided that she could put off showering for a little while longer. She was on the hunt again, and her curious investigator's nature was gleeful to have scented a trail.

As ever, the sweet-tempered woman opened the door with a big smile and a kind greeting.

"Merri, how are you doing this fine evening?"

"Honestly, I've been better, Loretta," Brody told the medical examiner who was also her landlady and friend. "And if you have a few minutes, I'd be extremely grateful if we could talk."

Loretta's smile transformed to a serious yet equally receptive expression.

"Of course, dear. We just cleaned up dinner and the boys are off doing their schoolwork, but there should be some jerked chicken left, if you're hungry."

"I might just take you up on that," Merri said, feeling her stomach rumble its loss of the evening meal to her impromptu and lengthy nap.

"So, what's bothering you, Merri?" Loretta asked, after serving her up a large helping of chicken and rice and watching her guest put away a good portion of it.

"You heard about what happened with LaSalle?"

"I heard you two got yourselves locked in a freezer and the NOFD found you all snuggled up and soakin' wet."

Merri felt her cheeks flush. She hadn't even considered the rumors likely to spread like wildfire through the local policing community about the incident.

"Oh, god," she moaned. "How bad does scuttlebutt have it?"

Loretta smiled, her mischievous soul flashing in her dark eyes. "By the time the tale got back round to the coroner's office, the pair of you had been meeting up for an illicit rendezvous and accidentally locked yourselves in the freezer, and whatever kinky acts you were up to set off the fire alarm and got you both busted."

"I suppose that's not so bad..." Merri lied. It was terrible. Any NOPD officers she came in contact with would be giving her the 'eye' if not outright sniggering, for the next few months at the very least.

"Some rumors have it you were also caught in the buff and _in flagrante delicto_." Loretta Wade laughed in her infectious way, pulling her perturbed and crimson-faced guest along into her merriment.

"Cops can be worse than a knitting circle for the gossip, I swear," she said finally, before sobering. "But you and I both know what was really going on in that pub."

"Do we?" Merri asked, relieved that she'd finally, _finally_ found someone willing to discuss what was going on with her troubled fellow agent. "Because I sure as hell don't. LaSalle is refusing to tell me who he was meeting there, or why. And Pride won't say a word about it, pretending that he's only respecting his friend's privacy. It's driving me nuts."

Loretta patted her hand.

"Men," she said with a shake of her head and an exasperated sigh. "Those boys would go to hell and back in aide of another, but when it comes down to their own troubles, they don't know how to ask for anyone else's help, let alone accept it."

Merri matched her friend's exasperated sigh. "Men.

"Is it a genetic predisposition or what? That they're incapable of asking for help?"

"Who knows, honey," Loretta said. "I sure as hell haven't figured it out."

"But you do have an idea of what trouble LaSalle's into?" Merri asked hopefully. "It's something to do with his old Vice partner?"

Loretta Wade heaved a sigh that spoke a multitude of woes.

"I take it they neither of them ever told you the story about how Chris alienated himself from the force?"

"No," Merri said. "He only ever told me that Pride had taken him under his wing, saved him."

"That's one way of putting it," Loretta said. "And it's probably the most accurate, too."

"You know the code that exists amongst LEOs, the most important one, the bond between partners..."

"Always have your partner's back. No matter what," Merri said without hesitation. No one who served in law enforcement ever had to try to figure that one out. And here, she'd given up on her partner. Well, maybe not. After all, she _was_ getting the truth... just not from the man himself. But even though he wasn't being very honest with her, she would never ever think Chris LaSalle wouldn't have her back. "Are you saying LaSalle didn't back up his partner? I can't ever see him not being there when someone needs him."

Loretta smiled bitter-sweetly. "I agree with you whole-heartedly. Chris is a young man of solid character. But people's definition of 'having your partner's back' varies."

Merri raised her eyebrows. That was an interesting notion. "So he had a falling out with his partner because the man feels like Chris failed him? And that's enough to have LaSalle sneaking around, doing god knows what, ten years later?"

"I can't say precisely what Chris has been trying to do over the past week. But I can tell you that the pub where you found him belonged to his partner, Sidney Vincent's brother. And it's where Chris directed IA to search for Vincent's stash of stolen evidence."

"He was dirty?" Merri was surprised, to say the least. She knew the Southern boy to be beyond reproach, and she sort of applied that impeccable character to anyone closely associated with him. But if his partner was dirty, of course LaSalle turned him in. But knowing LaSalle, he'd likely given the man any number of chances to make amends, to do the right thing.

"In the end, yes," Loretta said. "I don't believe he started out that way. But not everyone can handle a cop's job day after unrelenting day, year after year. And when Katrina happened, they were in the middle of a three-month long drug ring sting, and in the chaos, Vincent must have saw it as an opportunity to make some extra money...

"It's a damn shame. He must have been a good man, a good cop at some point, because I know Chris respected Sidney. And that's not something that boy gives out freely. I think that's part of the reason he was so crushed by the whole thing, feeling betrayed by a man he considered a friend. Afterward, he began throwing himself into the worst undercover jobs that no one else would take. And because anyone who snitches to IA, whether it's legitimate or not is considered a traitor to the brotherhood, no one had the poor boy's back. As Chris himself puts it, he was as good as dead-"

"When Pride stepped in, recruited him into NCIS," Merri finished the tale with the portion she already had been privy to.

"And they been like father and son ever since," Loretta said. "But I don't think even Pride ever got all of the details out of Christopher about what happened back then."

"Or about what's happening now," Merri said, more determined than ever to find out the truth.

* * *

**A/N: Honestly, I hadn't posted this earlier, because I felt bad that it really didn't get us anywhere… just a little more exposition, but it's necessary. Hopefully, I'll get the plot pace to pick up a little in the next chapter!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: Some more exposition, but hopefully not too boring to read… :-)**

* * *

"Is he threatening you?"

Merri tossed the file she'd compiled onto the worn wooden kitchen table. Having bullied her way into LaSalle's place, over his protests that he'd rather not have visitors at the moment, Merri decided to just get directly to the point.

"What?" LaSalle asked, as she opted to ignore him this time, setting up the old metal percolator on the stove top to fix herself some coffee. It was probably a better route than trying to bore a hole through his skull with her eyes to see if she could see what was inside.

"Is. He. Threatening. You.?" She repeated crisply as if she were in diction class for persons with speech impediments, still not gracing him with a look. Instead, she opened the fridge and searched for the hazelnut creamer that seemed to be the only staple food in the man's house. Vegetables, eggs, milk, even beer could never be consistently found. But the hazelnut creamer... _always_. She frowned as she grabbed the plastic bottle only to discover that it was Chai Latte and _not_ Hazelnut. She glanced up at her partner. For some odd reason, Merri found this to be the most alarming discovery she'd made in the past few days.

Something was seriously wrong.

LaSalle, however, was apparently too preoccupied by her lead-in question to even notice her alarm over the creamer flavor.

"Who?" he asked, as she set the artificially flavored, mostly artificial cream on the counter next to the two ceramic mugs she'd pulled out of the cupboard. Because she _did_ like Chai Latte after all.

Was he really still trying to play dumb? Turning around, she leaned against the counter, feigned a yawn while she studied him, the water taking its own damned sweet time to come to a boil. Why did he like the slowest method of coffee preparation known to man? One might as well pour some grounds and water into a tin can -formerly containing beans- and heat it on an open fire.

LaSalle looked genuinely a bit confused, but that could just be that she'd banged forcefully on his door and barged in at 6am, catching him entirely off guard, considering he'd clearly been asleep. He was barefoot, dressed in a t-shirt and pair of sweats, which had obviously been hastily thrown on. The t-shirt was on inside out _and _backwards, the little white tag sticking out at her like a tongue from the neckline of the charcoal colored garment. He had a killer five o'clock shadow -literally, a grooming style she'd expect to find on a crazed serial killer. And there were dark circles under his eyes.

Merri took a step forward, flipped open the folder she'd set on the table and spun it around for him to read.

"Sidney Vincent," she said, taking a step back as he leaned over to see what she'd brought. "Your ex-partner, was released from prison last week."

Dark blue eyes, fully alert and aware locked with her own brown ones.

"Is he out for revenge, or what? What's got you so spooked, Chris?"

He sunk into one of the mismatched wooden chairs at the round oak table in desperate need of refinishing, shoving the file away with a look of distaste.

"I ain't spooked, _Merri_." So her use of his given name hadn't gone unnoticed. He was sharper than he looked in his rumpled, sleepy state. "Ya make me sound like some rabbit gone ta ground because a fox emerged from his den fif'y miles away."

"Then what are you?" she asked. "Because you sure as hell aren't the honest man I've come to know over the past year."

LaSalle sighed. "Apparently I'm the man who makes the gigantic fuckin' whopper kinda of mistakes."

He seemed to fold in on himself, his shoulders and head sagging, fingers rising to pinch the bridge of his nose. The federal agent wasn't a large man, but he'd never appeared particularly small before this moment. Merri had come to realize his personality could fill any space. Seeing it stunted, unable to fill the barely-more-than-a-galley kitchen made her own mood deflate significantly.

_Welcome to the club on that one_, Merri thought, debating with herself whether she ought to try to comfort her fellow agent, ultimately stepping forward with a hand raised to place on his shoulder.

She jumped, the rumble of the percolator reaching its perking point filling the otherwise oppressively silent kitchen. She debated using the interruption as an excuse to withdraw entirely, but decided to simply turn the heat down and then return her attention to LaSalle, placing her hand on his shoulder, hoping he'd know it was meant in comfort, and not in placation, or an attempt to coax more information out of him. Because while she _did _desire to hear the whole story, Merri was generally feeling sympathetic towards her troubled friend.

"I believe Pride would say, 'there ain't a mistake... we can't fix... _together_.'"

She gave her best rendition of the ebullient senior agent and his stinted yet charming cadence. And was rewarded with a tremor in LaSalle's shoulder beneath her palm as he chuckled. His full-blown grin came immediately to her mind's eye even though his head was still bent towards the table, slowly shaking back and forth.

"'Suppose he would say precisely that," LaSalle said, finally looking up at Merri, startling her a little. Were his eyes always so much bluer this early in the morning? Probably not. She suspected he spent quite a few mornings bleary-eyed and nursing a hangover. But not this morning. He didn't seem the type to wallow his sorrows in booze. Drinking himself silly was something she noticed that the man only did when he was in a good mood. After the apparently rough week he'd had, replete with overnight hospital stay, he was as sober as a Baptist preacher on Sunday. And that was apparent in the deep, clear Mediterranean blue of his eyes.

Merri fixed the mugs of coffee without asking LaSalle how he took his. She already knew that he took just a splash of creamer in the morning, and drank it black in the middle of the day, and tempered it with a bunch of sugar and milk in the evening. She'd be a damned poor agent if she couldn't even pay enough attention to the people she saw practically every day to know how they liked their caffeine. LaSalle accepted the steaming mug with a splash of 'Chai Latte' (and not hazelnut) creamer with a quiet 'thanks.' She watched him raise the mug to his lips and take the first hesitant sip. He didn't grimace. So he must not be averse to the Chai flavored creamer. Yet, why so religiously stock his fridge with hazelnut if he didn't have some sort of fetish for it?

"Sidney never confessed," LaSalle said after a few minutes had passed in which they silently sipped at their coffees. "Even though a hugely reduced sentence was being offered. It wasn't like IA wanted to make an example of 'im or nothin'. The entire department, the district attorney's office... the whole city had 'nough problems. The quicker it was resolved, the better."

Merri only nodded, afraid anything she might say could possibly discourage the reluctantly vocal man, or shut him down altogether again.

"When he was released last week, he came to me, said he never blamed me for what I done." Obviously uncomfortable with the subject matter under discussion, LaSalle shifted in his chair, his tongue darting out, wetting his lips. "He... uh... he asked me to help 'im."

"Help him _what?_" God! Most of the time she kept herself, her impulses under strict control, but she was admittedly more susceptible to curiosity. And after the past week... of course she couldn't hold her tongue entirely.

LaSalle finally had seemed to let her in (or submitted to her forcing her way in), and therefore, decision made, he apparently was done shying away from the situation. And so he looked directly into her eyes with that amazingly intense gaze of his, saying, "Help him prove his innocence."

* * *

**A/N: So now Merri knows the truth, but is will she be able to help LaSalle resolve the situation? Will he let her try?  
**


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: Yes. I'm still working on this one. And we're getting to the more exciting bits…**

**Also, rereading what I've already written/posted, this still is going to take place about when I started it for the sake of consistency, about mid-season one, pre-Savannah whanot.**

* * *

Sidney Vincent was a tall man, with mocha colored skin, and dark eyes that held a jovial light. It had surprised Merri to find that good-natured personality residing in the ex-con. Ten years in prison would be enough to take the good humor out of the bubbliest of personalities. Hell, Shirley Temple would come out a cranky old bat. A cheerful disposition was the first thing to die in prison, followed by compassion and empathy. But as the man had told his story, she could tell that it wasn't remotely an act. No wonder LaSalle had felt so betrayed, disillusioned, depressed even, when it turned out that his partner had been a dirty cop.

Only, Merri had found herself believing that the man just might be innocent, if her intuition was worth anything at all. Not to mention that of Agent Pride, and perhaps the man who was the most qualified to get a read on the convicted ex-cop, Chris LaSalle. Then again, Pride might be reluctant to involve his agents in matters beyond their jurisdiction. And she couldn't imagine the turmoil and confusion that must be rampant in the younger agent's mind.

Especially now.

And now she'd never have a chance to confirm her initial read on Sidney Vincent, to help LaSalle figure out the truth about his old partner.

No.

They could still get to the bottom of this.

She sighed, closing the dead man's empty, staring eyes before looking up at the shocked, hurt young man crouched on the other side of the body.

"We'll find who did this," she said, reaching out to squeeze LaSalle's arm.

"We gotta clear his name," the agent ground out, the muscles twitching in his clenched jaw, and in the taut bicep beneath her fingers.

"If he's innocent, we'll find the proof."

"Ya think he'd be dead right now if we hadna started pokin' around?" LaSalle gave her that intense look of his that never failed to raise the hairs on the back of her neck. In her career, she'd stared down many criminals, ranging from run-of-the-mill lowlifes to certifiably insane psychopaths. But none of them had possessed anything to compare to Chris LaSalle's poignant, almost primal, and yet intelligent, passionate deep blue stare. "If Sidney'd been guilty, then there wa'n't any reason to kill him now. He ain't never talked. So it couldn't be some partner afraid that he'd bring 'em down. An' the entire stash was seized, so there wouldn't be no reason to come after him for that. He's innocent, Brody. An' I didn' believe 'im. An' now he's dead."

"It's not your-" Merri's attempt to reassure her partner was cut off abruptly by a loud clatter from the back of the house. But they'd cleared the place... hadn't they?

Oh, shit.

She locked eyes with her partner for a moment, as they both reached for their side-arms. They'd stopped by Sidney's place to pick up the file he'd begun putting together, with all of the relevant information he could remember from back during his and LaSalle's vice days, including a list of potential suspects for the crime he'd been convicted of committing, some of which LaSalle had already been tracking down the previous week. There'd been no answer at the door. A check through the filmy curtains covering the front windows... and they'd had probable cause to break down the door.

It had been an unprofessional thing to do, but they had -both of them- succumbed to the shock, dropping to their knees beside the fallen man, scrambling to find a pulse, failing. Why hadn't they had the self-possession to clear the house first?

It was her bad. This man had been LaSalle's friend. It was only natural that Sidney was his first thought.

Her first thought should have been to secure the premises. But it had only been of LaSalle, a man far too young to have such loss and grief in his pretty blue eyes.

Now, now they fell back into their training, into 'federal agent' mode, rising to their feet, signaling to each other without words, communicating the familiar pattern their actions would take using only their eyes and quick, small gestures, the touch of a hand to a shoulder. They efficiently cleared the front two rooms, what must have been a parlor when the house was originally built but was now a sort of makeshift den, and the other an even more sparsely furnished dining room. But, really, why would Sidney Vincent have any belongings? Anything he had, had ended up in his wife's -eventually his ex-wife's… his widow's- possession when he went to prison.

They pushed quickly back, clearing towards the kitchen, and Merri used her multitasking ability to try to analyze the clatter. Had it been metallic? Heavy or light? How far away? And what direction? Which room- There was a loud bang that made her start, despite asserting the firm grip that she'd placed on her fight or flight response, as she always did when in the midst of a raid.

Be rational. Be level-headed.

LaSalle had swung around at the sudden noise, placing his back to the pantry he'd just checked, nodded at Merri, who turned and proceeded out into the hall, where the noise had emerged from. It had sounded rather like, in fact, precisely like a screen door slamming. She felt LaSalle's strong, warm back press against hers, as he covered her six.

She almost sagged in relief, or perhaps defeat, lowering her gun before suggesting they check the second floor next, but then she saw it, through the warped mesh of the screen door.

"LaSalle." She wasn't sure why she was whispering, since the figure was already running as fast as his/her legs could carry him/her from the scene. "Subject. Green jacket. Black pants. Twenty yards out and gaining."

"Go." How the man switched from devastating grief and such wild emotional intensity to cool and collected business-like badassery, was a little bit disturbing, as well as impressive. "I'll try'n' cut 'em off 'round the block."

Merri nodded once, and then she was hastily opening the screen door and running out into a tangled, unkempt yard, weapon trained on the fleeing figure. All evidence indicated that they'd been in the house, that they could be the potential killer, but there were so many other possibilities. There wasn't enough evidence to even just shoot the runner in the leg and put them down. Shoot first. Ask questions later. Not an option.

So instead, she wound her way around the random debitage, old tires, the remnants of a rusty swing set, cement blocks, broken bottles, all dangerously obscured by the tall grass. She had to look down at her feet as much as at the subject she was pursuing, just so she wouldn't trip and impale herself on something. When was the last time she'd had a tetanus booster?

"Federal agent! Stop!" She shouted, the gap closing as the fleeing individual was halted by a tall fence and scrambled to climb it. He... it was a male, thin but apparently wiry, for he did make it up and over the chipboard wall in rather impressive time.

Merri herself hesitated when she stopped a couple feet in front of the actually kind of daunting barrier (considering it was made out of hillbilly siding). Maybe she could find another way around. She'd done her part of pushing the suspect, flushing him out towards LaSalle who should be circling around just about now.

She closed her eyes. Took a breath. Saw Sidney Vincent's smile, full of warmth and geniality despite an unimaginably rough life. Saw his kind eyes. Saw them lifelessly staring.

Setting her jaw, Merri took a couple steps backward, holstering her Glock for the moment, and then ran at the wall, jumping and finding purchase, as well as several splinters in her fingers and the palms of her hands. She wasn't a petite woman, and she was quite glad of her longer limbs at the moment. Actually, she sort of wished she was even taller, as she pulled herself up the last foot and then swung a leg over the top, wincing as a nail caught her thigh, tearing her slacks and her skin.

Guess she definitely was due for that tetanus shot.

Her boots hit the uneven pavement with a _thunk_, which was shortly echoed by a gun shot that sent her already rapidly beating heart into overdrive.

_LaSalle._

She wasn't good enough to tell whether the crack of a firearm discharging belonged to his P228 or another handgun, or even some other weapon, such as a rifle or a shotgun. Maybe in ideal circumstances... But not in these.

Merri could, however, tell where the report came from, and began running down the block towards its source, blood pounding in her ears. And a voice shouting, pleading in her head.

Let LaSalle be okay. She'd only just made up with him. She'd almost lost him, the crazy bastard going off half-cocked, trying to handle problems far too heavy for any one man to shoulder. She wasn't going to lose a member of this... this _family_ that had taken her in.

LaSalle had to be okay. He had to…

* * *

**A/N: How's that for some excitement? ;-)**


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: Sorry about the cliff-hanger in the last chapter… sometimes I just can't help myself. :-p Really, the chapter was going to be very long if I didn't stop myself, and it was a good spot to end it. And now we have a different type, mainly post-action scene.**

* * *

"I heard gunfire," Merri said breathlessly as she slowed from a fierce run to stand before her partner and the man currently laying belly down on the dirty sidewalk with his arms trussed up behind his back.

"Our _friend_ here didn' seem inclined to stop when I tole him to," LaSalle said, grinning in that smug way that Merri knew she herself did after successfully apprehending a suspect. "Stopped right quick when my SIG done the asking."

A warning shot? That was more than she'd probably have given a man caught running from the scene of her friend's murder. Again, she had to give the Southern agent credit for being far more calm and collected than his often passionate nature implied he was capable.

Perhaps that was why she liked him and Pride so much. They both had an unwavering sense of justice. In all likelihood, LaSalle had acquired it from the senior agent who'd trained him, taken him in, _adopted_ him really... As far as Merri could tell, that was the closest relationship type she could compare the pair to, a surrogate father-son scenario.

Then again, morality was something learned young, and reinforced throughout a boy's life. LaSalle's family sounded less than cookie cutter by what she'd gleaned from the man, but she had to give them some credit for producing Chris.

And also Sidney Vincent. She had no doubt the man had had a hand in forming the law enforcement officer she'd found herself partnered with, too. Merri still remembered her first supervising agent. Charlie Laughlin. It was his voice gone raspy from thirty-plus years of smoking hand-rolled, filterless cigarettes, that took her through the process of preparing for a day of 'busting punks'. Double and triple check her weapon, make sure she had her knife sheathed in her boot. Always present a well-put-together front, and take a moment or two to imagine donning your game face before going on the job. It may seem silly, he had told her, but it worked, it kept a person from blurring the lines too much between their private off-duty and professional selves. And Merri knew the psychologically sound principles behind it, but of course never mentioned them to Charlie. The man was old school. And he hated shrinks. Unlike everything Merri had subsequently trained for, to understand the criminal mind, Charlie hadn't cared why people did bad things. To him, they were bad guys. And their being guilty of committing a crime was all he needed to know to haul their asses in.

Agent Brody had been having a harder time separating her private and professional selves while working with the close-knit NOLA agents. Honestly, she was a little bit afraid that she was becoming more 'Merri' with them than 'Agent Brody' although she at least still had the distance of their using her surname most of the time. But there were other things, the way they claimed more and more of her off-duty hours with friendly pop-ins and invitations to go out with the 'team' after closing a case... or really practically on a daily basis. The two men who shared a familial-style bond threw their entire selves into the cases they investigated, all passion and no reserve. And while Charlie had always insisted on keeping the job separate from your personal identity, he'd been made of the same material as Pride and LaSalle, a passion for justice, accepting no excuses from criminals for the bad decisions they made. Do their job. Enforce the law. Let the rest of the system serve its function and mete out society's justice.

Only, that didn't always work, did it?

LaSalle was sporting a much more sober look, mellowing from the high of a successful chase and apprehension as he hauled their subdued suspect to his feet. There was a biting edge to his smooth Southern accent by the time he was mirandizing the man after informing him that he was under arrest for suspicion of homicide and the obvious 'resisting arrest'. Merri walked beside her partner as he marched their suspect ahead of them, one hand on the back of the scrawny man's neck, the other firmly gripping one of the handcuffed wrists at the small of his back.

He was a rather silent criminal, hadn't said a word, just glared with his shifty grey eyes. But what with the ambitious fleeing he'd done, Merri wasn't about to say that he'd come quietly. Her thigh had begun to ache as the adrenaline left her system and it was all she could do not to limp the final block back to where they'd parked the SUV out front of Sidney Vincent's home. She pulled the phone from her pocket, looking for a distraction from the burning in her leg.

First, she called NOPD dispatch. She may personally know Loretta Wade, renting her guest house and all, but Merri knew better than to circumvent the local authorities and call the medical examiner directly. Especially in a matter that wasn't _exactly_ within NCIS jurisdiction. So she simply identified herself as a federal agent, gave out her ID number, and reported the dead body. She faltered on divulging the fact that they'd apprehended a suspect, looking to LaSalle who gave her a big eyed pleading look in combination with a sharp shake of his head. Okay, she'd let Pride decide whether they needed to hand over their wiry, tight-lipped fence-jumper.

Her next call was to their boss, in which she briefly gave the sitrep, informed him that NOPD had been notified, and was reassured that he was on his way directly over to them. She'd heard the slide of the metal cabinet drawer where he kept his service weapon even before she'd finished her first sentence.

LaSalle shut the back passenger SUV door after stashing their suspect inside, looking grim.

"King on his way?"

Merri studied her fellow agent for a moment, unable to get a precise read on his normally expressive face. It occurred to her, as it had several times before, that the emotionality that Chris LaSalle displayed, albeit intense, was ever only what he was willing to share. It was a little bit of a depressing notion to have about someone who seemed so easy going and light-hearted. Why couldn't her friend be completely open? Was everyone haunted by dark corners in their souls?

"Yeah," she said, unsure whether he would be pleased or angry that she'd called their boss in. Because while she knew LaSalle trusted the older agent, he'd also gone to great lengths to keep both her and Pride out of the case he'd been investigating on his own.

"Good." LaSalle nodded, his posture relaxing slightly. Apparently, he felt just as happy as she did about the prospect of dealing with local LEOs at the moment (i.e. not at all). They were both seasoned agents, grown-ass adults, but obviously more than happy to pass off the responsibility to their supervising agent.

Merri shifted her weight, winced, tenderly placed a hand on the burning flesh of her thigh where the tear in her slacks was barely visible. It felt much wetter than she had expected, but the fabric was black and hid what would be a bright red stain on a lighter colored pair of pants. She removed her hand, examining the palm covered in fresh blood. Shit. That nail had cut her pretty good.

"You hurt?"

The concern in her partner's voice matched that which she found in his deep blue eyes when she glanced up to discover him intently studying her. He took her hand before she could protest, frowning at the blood, then glanced down at its source. Reaching around her, he opened the front passenger door of the SUV, barking 'behave' at the reluctant but apparently resigned prisoner sat handcuffed in the backseat, before he took Merri by the elbow and guided her to sit sideways on the bucket seat with her legs hanging out the open door. She only briefly resisted, for his extra gentlemanly manner only belied his forceful stubbornness, which s(he'd never openly admit) might just outmatch her own if ever tested head-to-head.

When he disappeared and she heard the clunk and hiss of the hatch being opened in the back of the vehicle, she let herself sigh and sag in relief over having the weight off her injured leg. Of course, she sucked it up and put her 'tough' mask back on when LaSalle returned with the first aid kit. Injury? What injury? It was nothing. A mere flesh wound. It-

"LaSalle, what the hell?!"

He'd carefully poked both of his index fingers through the rip in her trousers, and then gripping the fabric between finger and thumb he'd torn the leg of her pants wide open, revealing the entire width of her thigh, a good portion of which was coated in blood.

"Unless ya've got some sorta magic seamstress powers as part of your badass repertoire, these pants are not fit but for a rag-rug," he said, giving her his 'you ain't actually mad at me because I'm so adorably charming' grin. She narrowed her eyes.

"What's a rag-rug?" she asked, trying to focus on something beside the small bottle of antiseptic fluid he was upending onto a sterile gauze pad. She was not looking forward to that making contact with her skin. Really, she'd rather just go off somewhere alone to lick her wounds, at least tend to them herself with some privacy, but again, she recognized the stubborn sort of determined look in the younger man's eyes. Plus, it wouldn't be bad for him to have further distraction from what they'd found lying dead in a pool of blood not twenty minutes previously, and the man they'd caught fleeing the scene.

"My momma makes 'em out of scraps of old clothes and the like," LaSalle explained as he began to clean the blood off her exposed skin, working his way around the gash in her flesh, closing in on its precise dimensions. Merri chose to watch his face instead of the slowly-being-revealed tear in her leg. "Guess it comes from growin' up poor. She can't let nothin' go to waste."

"My grandmother was the same way," Merri said. "A good portion of her childhood was spent barely surviving the Great Depression. She-"

Merri sucked in a sharp breath, biting the inside of her cheek so as not to yelp, when he ran the alcohol coated gauze pad over the open wound, cleaning it to reveal a rather straight slice, that was indeed much deeper than she'd expected, before the trench filled with bright red fluid which flooded over and began to run down her thigh, this time off to the edges of the wound since her leg was elevated, rather than down towards her knee.

"Looks kinda deep," LaSalle said, looking up at her with concern as he hastily pressed a much thicker wad of clean gauze to the wound, making Merri hiss and flinch once more until she grew accustomed to the pressure of his hand pressing down on the abused flesh. "Ya probably should go ta the hospital, get some stitches in there."

"And a tetanus shot," she added, laughing wryly.

"Whadya cut yourself on?"

"Our _friend_ here…" she glared at the man in the back seat who staunchly chose to ignore her. "Decided to hop some poorly built fence. I followed, and a nail snagged my pants."

"More than snagged ya, I'd say."

Merri could only nod wordlessly as he looked up at her from where he was crouched before her, his eyes kind and soft, round, and so goddamned blue it was a sin. But she could deal with those eyes of his. Had been since she'd first met him all those months ago. It was the way his thumb was absently rubbing the bare skin of her thigh, a mindless caress of what was dangerously close to being considered the _inside_ of her thigh, that had robbed her of words. Well, the capability of forming them without the fear of their being entirely the _wrong_ sort of words in such a situation. Because she could tell he had no idea he was even doing it, his thumb playing over flesh that due to proximity with nerve ending flaring with pain, was hypersensitive, was making the skin on her arms and along her spine turn to goose bumps, was making her tingle in places she really ought not to.

A car pulled up beside them, and Merri sent up a prayer of thanks to whoever was the patron saint of female professionals for the distraction, for the excuse to escape the really nice -no, _bad_, bad-touch of her coworker.

"I got this," she said, taking advantage of LaSalle's own distraction, and then obvious relief as Agent Dwayne Pride emerged from the newly arrived vehicle. She gently lifted his hand away by the wrist, slipping her own into its place, holding the now red-stained gauze on her wound to staunch the flow of blood. It had to be pretty well clotted by now, right?

"King." The relief was more than obvious, as was the respect, and even a little bit of need in the tone of LaSalle's voice as he rose to greet his mentor, friend, surrogate father and boss.

_What am I? Chopped liver? _Merri thought before she could catch and scold herself, alarmed and upset by the loss she felt when Chris LaSalle had ceased his attentions to her, turning his back to her and focusing on Pride instead.

Well, that jealous reaction, good ol' Charlie Laughlin would've said, was because she'd failed to properly don her game face. She'd let a little bit of her personal self slip into her professional self. Or maybe she'd let a little bit of her professional life slip into her personal one. Charlie had been a firm proponent of keeping them separate. When you were on the job, your partner, your fellow agents were the most important thing. But go home _to your self_, by yourself, leave the job behind. Be the devoted spouse and parent, the home cook, the guy who liked to watch the game with a beer, to build a boat in his basement, to dabble in watercolor or curl up with a book. Because if you let even your close friendship with your partner into your personal life, the rest of the job would follow, including nightmares about what you'd seen, what you'd done in the line of duty.

But Merri had come to realize that, with Pride and LaSalle and the rest of their little crime-fighting team, the personal and professional weren't separate. They were all mixed together like gumbo, a complex and spicy, and very tempting dish that might just burn a person if they weren't careful.

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**A/N: So I'd been trying to keep this non-shippy/neutral, but who the hell am I kidding… of course some Cherri slipped in there. How could Merri not be attracted to passionate, tender and attentive Chris?! **


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note: My imagination finally decided it was time to update this one. So far in season two, I am already missing the friendship they'd begun to develop between Brody and LaSalle, am getting sick of Percy but looking forward to some canon Pride and LaSalle bonding moments. Actually, I had better try to wrap this one up before we get too much canon back story (although it may not be exclusive of this little plot.)**

* * *

It was apparent that LaSalle didn't want to be there. Well, Merri herself didn't exactly want to be stuck in the hospital for the better part of a day, either. But she'd been sidelined along with the rest of the 'minor' injuries as an industrial accident flooded the ER. Pride had sent the younger agent along with her, obviously to keep him out of the way when the senior agent interrogated the suspect they'd apprehended, and played middleman with the NOPD. The fact that she couldn't drive herself with the leg injury provided excuse enough.

And it wasn't entirely a bad thing, for it gave her time to get some more information out of LaSalle, even allowing for him to wander off into bittersweet remembrances of his old NOPD partner.

"And then the pig came charging out from under the porch!" Chris' laughter was a welcome sound in the busy ER otherwise filled with the noise of distressed and suffering people, but Merri hadn't been paying attention to the anecdote he'd been telling her. She'd been too busy trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, trying to figure out where they were supposed to go from there.

"Guess you had to be there," Chris said, his tone sobered. And she felt briefly guilty for ruining his little happy walk down memory lane. He'd been under such stress the last week, trying to help his old partner clear his name, getting concussed and hypothermia.

"Vincent sounds like he was a good guy," Merri said, patting her partner's hand which he'd insisted on placing over the bandage on her thigh, applying pressure when she'd removed her own hand, her knuckles popping as she worked her numb fingers. He squeezed her leg in reflex making her flinch.

He hastily removed his hand.

"Oh, sorry."

She let out a hissing breath through clenched teeth. "It's okay, Chris. It shouldn't need pressure anymore, anyway. And if it hasn't clotted by now, then I've got more serious problems than a simple laceration to the thigh."

"May I?" he asked, indicating the nearly soaked-though bandage and she nodded her permission. He gingerly pulled the corner up, wincing in sympathy as a sharp tug of pain shot through her tender flesh. "Dammit. They've kept us waitin' here so long that it's clotted alright, directly to the bandage."

Merri had the horrible image of the wound closing and healing around the gauze, soft cotton fibers sealed into her leg. Apparently, so did Chris, for he jumped to his feet.

"That's it. I'm gettin' someone ta see ya right now," he said and before she could protest was pulling the nearest woman in a lab coat off to the side, flashing his badge and doing whatever strange mixture of sweetness and intimidation comprised his irresistible Southern Charm.

Half an hour and a couple dozen stitches later, she was limping back to the car, one arm draped over her friend's shoulder, his hand firmly gripping her waist.

"So, this Darren Massey character who hit you in the back of the head and shut you up with the freezer-burnt rack of lamb..." she said, too weary from the painkillers and antibiotics she'd been given to put up a battle against the younger man's coddling, instead allowing him to tuck her into the passenger seat of his truck. He even leaned across her to buckle her in, which was a little much, but she rather keep him happy and talkative than get into a snappy tiff with him. She just wanted this whole mess to make sense. "Is that the guy we caught in Sidney's house?"

"Nope," Chris said, shutting the passenger door and making her huff with frustration. She was beginning to develop a headache as she combated the drowsy effects of the medicine that had been injected directly into her veins. It took all of her energy to focus entirely on LaSalle as he climbed into the truck, giving him an expectant look.

"I ain't never seen the bastard who shot Sidney before," he said. "But Furious D... We gonna be havin' a _friendly _chat on my terms this time. As soon as I track his ass down..."

...

A quick check-in with Pride confirming her suspicions that their murder suspect was as tight-lipped as ever and Merri was beyond ready to call it a day. On the whole, it hadn't been _all_ that rough. But those hospital-strength painkillers couldn't even seem to be balanced by two 12oz cups of coffee as black as tar. Instead, she was feeling both anxious and exhausted.

And worst of all, she knew LaSalle wasn't about to call it a day. Even after his boss-friend-mentor suggested it in his amiable not-ordering-but-actually-am-ordering-you way that the younger man go get some rest. And they would start fresh tomorrow.

Merri had to admit there were definite benefits to staying in one place long enough to form strong ties to the local constabulary, officials and citizenry. Dwayne Pride held enough sway that he somehow convinced NOPD to let them handle the case of Sidney Vincent's murder. In part perhaps, because he'd implied that some nasty allegations about false imprisonment of an innocent man and a failure in the NOLA justice system might just come to the attention of the media. And the Navy investigators knew how to operate 'discreetly'... Well, when it came to SecNav and the director ordering them to keep military secrets under wraps while still trying to solve a homicide. They did that well... When it came to being discreet on the street... well they did have a bit of a reputation for unnecessary force when kicking down doors.

Maybe the NOPD brass wouldn't mind that. Because if Sidney Vincent hadn't been a dirty cop... He'd been one of their ranks. And he'd been murdered.

"There's a few spots I'd like ta check out before callin' it quits for the day, King." LaSalle was persisting in arguing with their boss. "Massey'll be easier ta find at night. He comes out ta play after the sun goes down, like the rat he is."

Merri watched the older agent's face as he intently studied his friend. His thoughts were easily discernable. Was LaSalle exhausted enough that he was liable to get sloppy, make a mistake, get hurt? Was he within the normal limits of his sometimes passionate temperament? Or was he likely to do something uncalled for out of anger and guilt?

Given everything, the younger man seemed to be rather in control of himself. He'd even waited -relatively patiently- with her at the hospital for her wound to be tended. He hadn't insisted on having a go at the suspect they'd apprehended, either, showing he was being reasonable enough to know Pride would've tried everything possible to get the truth out of the stoic prisoner.

"Fine, Christopher, but I'm goin', with you."

Merri spotted the slight frown furrowing Pride's brow as he turned to his cabinet to retrieve his sidearm.

She forced herself to stand up, willing the heavy feeling from her brain.

"I'll go, Pride," she said, her voice thankfully sounded more alert than she felt. "You have Laurel's concert to get to tonight, don't you?"

The older man, biological father to one, caretaker of many, appeared momentarily conflicted, relief and worry warring on his face. And then he gave Merri the same scrutinizing treatment as he'd given LaSalle. She stared him straight back in the eye. She was in perfectly fine condition to back up her partner's bar-hopping search. She could do this. She wanted to do this.

"You sure?" Apparently, she wasn't quite as readable to the man as his decade-old friend was. Which honestly pleased her. It was good to know that despite settling into this place, letting Pride and LaSalle in, she could still keep her thoughts and feelings entirely to herself when she wanted.

"Yes," she said. "I want to see this through. Besides, it's Darren Massey's fault I spent three hours trapped in a freezer with LaSalle's hypothermic ass."

Pride nodded his permission.

"Alright, but be careful. An' call me, if ya find anythin."

...

Okay, so her tone was like that of a child who'd missed their nap, pathetic and yes, a full-fledged whine.

"Please tell me this is the last one, LaSalle."

"We ain't but halfway done, Brody." He gave her his big, goofy grin, his eyes flashing with excitement. And she couldn't be sure if it was from the hunt of tracking down a suspect, or this was reminiscent of the bar-hopping that comprised so many of his 'fun-filled' evenings.

"I'm drivin'…" he said pushing the door open to reveal yet another packed dive with quite possibly the stickiest floors she'd ever had the misfortune of setting her feet upon. The interior was gloomy -she supposed they said 'mood lighting'- and although there was a smoke-free sign hiding amongst the grime on one wall, there was a tar-like smog filling the place. "So why don't I get ya a li'l somethin' ta put a smile on yer face?"

"Like what?" She gave him a 'what the hell?' look because, "You know they gave me some powerful painkillers and antibiotics at the hospital."

LaSalle stared at her for a few seconds, the look on his face oddly inscrutable. Then he shrugged, licking his lips before chuckling at whatever inside joke he'd been the only one in on, before he made for the far end of the bar, taking Merri's hand and towing her reluctant self along.

What the hell had that been about?

He bullied a blonde, middle-aged man off from his barstool. The twenty-something brunette the man had been hitting on gave LaSalle a grateful smile that held far more interest than it had for the older man who had been sent on his way. It promptly faded when the Southern Gentleman who'd rescued her turned his attention to Merri, grabbing her waist and lifting her up to sit her on the now vacant stool.

The shocked agent barely contained the surprised yelp to her throat. What the hell was he playing at? Her heart pounded in her chest in an entirely uncalled for excited manner as he leaned in close, his hand sliding down from her waist, over her hip to rest gently on her thigh. Was he trying to establish a cover by displaying a lover's affection for her? Every other place they'd been that night, they'd just discreetly asked the bartender a few questions about Massey, whether they knew the man, seen him around recently, sometimes needed to flash a photo or a badge.

"Does yer leg hurt?" His voice was a hot, moist whisper against her ear that made the sensitive skin on neck turn to gooseflesh.

"No," she said, pretty certain her traitorously excited body couldn't feel much beyond the flush of heat from having his warm body so close, the strangely alluring mix of aromas, smoke, alcohol and LaSalle making her somewhat dizzy. Leg? Hurt? Why would it?

"You're bleedin' agin," he said quietly, pressing his hand against her wounded thigh. She hissed. Now she felt it. He pulled back enough to show her the blood coating his palm, like a secret conspiracy between two kids on the playground hoarding some candy or a frog they'd caught.

That wasn't good.

"Oh" was all she managed to say.

"I'm bringin' ya home." His blue eyes were extremely intense at the moment, dark and clear, and invasive. She looked away. The rush of heat blossoming low in her belly and blooming outward, which could only be called 'lustful' in nature, was likely apparent in her eyes, too. And that was definitely something LaSalle did not need to see. Because it wasn't him. Not really. Not as much as it was that the air so thick with smoke and alcoholic fumes and maybe some other illicit substances was downright intoxicating. And the fact that she was apparently having adverse reactions to the medications administered to her. And that she'd been craving a man's touch for a couple weeks now (something she normally could maintain firm control over).

"No," she said, finally finding the distraction she needed to get control over the unwelcome sensation of burgeoning arousal. She stared back into those eyes as dark blue as a deep, fresh mountain lake.

"You're no use ta me if ya pass out from-"

She cut him off, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him in close to whisper in his ear, giving all the appearance of flirtatious lovers to the rest of the bar's clientele.

"I promise I'll get it looked at as soon as I can. But I think we should take care of Massey first."

LaSalle jerked, turning his head sharply and bumping her cheek with his nose in his rush to look around, find the man in question. Merri squeezed the back of his neck, stilling him.

"He'd recognize you," she said, falling into cool and collected agent mode. "It's so packed in here, you'd probably never make it to him. He's sitting just a few feet from the back exit, at about your 4'oclock."

"So, how ya wanna play this, then, Brody?" One of his hands had found the wrist of hers at his neck. He kept it there, placing the other at her waist, leaning into her and shifting slightly as if he were trying to rub up against her, but in actuality was repositioning them both just a little, so that his back was directly to their target with no chance of his being recognized as she was afforded a more direct line of sight.

"I'll get close, confirm he's our guy, and slap a pair of cuffs on him."

"I can't let ya do that. Not when you're bleedin' like that," Chris' tone became sharp, his fingers digging into her wrist and hip. "Can ya even stand?"

She pulled her hand away from the enticingly soft hair on the nape of his neck, and shoved him rather forcefully in the chest, making him stumble back a couple of steps. She jumped to her feet, cursing silently at the stabbing pain in her leg. Had she somehow tore the stitches out?

Taking the hint, LaSalle kept his back to their suspect, disappearing into the crowd, muttering to himself about 'crazy females not knowin' their own minds' as she turned to the bartender, ordered a whiskey, neat -with no intention of drinking it, which LaSalle would doubtlessly call a waste- and made her own way through the crowd towards the exit.

Darren 'Furious D' Massey was precisely what one would expect a man who'd been a dedicated hoodlum a decade ago to look like. He still dressed like an obnoxious white kid poser, baggy clothes, hat turned sideways, gaudy gold chain hanging around his neck that Merri just wanted to yank so hard as to bounce his face off the table. But LaSalle was right, a full-fledged fight she was in no condition for. She swallowed back the nausea -whether it was from the drug-ravaged features of the man's face or the throbbing wound in her thigh, who knew- and put on a big fake flirtatious smile.

"Is that seat taken?" she asked, indicating the four inch strip of cracked vinyl at the edge of the booth beside her target, which would conveniently place her between the man and the exit. He grinned a _-really? C'mon_\- gold-capped tooth smile at her, shimmied only a couple inches over and patted the cushion that was disgorging its deteriorating foam innards.

"Plen'y a'room for a sweet thing like yerself," he said, blatantly checking her out. Overheated -possibly signs of a fever she hadn't noticed she'd developed- she had shed her jacket earlier, and she could feel her teal silk blouse clinging to her sweat-dampened skin, molding against her stomach and sides, her breasts. Before he could spot the wet slick of blood on her dark slacks, she slipped into the booth, barely able to find the room to settle one buttock in the scant space, having to balance herself with her sore leg. And growing angrier by the minute.

"So, baby," Massey said, his breath reeking of tobacco and alcohol. A hand began creeping behind her shoulders. "Where ya been all my life?"

It took all of her strength not to roll her eyes. Just a few more seconds. A be-ringed, sweaty hand perched on her shoulder and she leaned back as if settling into the embrace, trapping his arm behind her. She was considering how precisely to subdue him quickly and easily, more for LaSalle's concerned sake than for her own deteriorating health, when something hot and clammy -she could feel even through the light fabric of her pants- settled on her knee.

She grabbed the wrist, digging her fingers in, pulled the cuffs from her back pants pocket -easily done, considering that that half of her ass wasn't remotely on the booth seat- and slapped them on his wrist. He shouted in a alarm, tried to pull his other hand from behind Merri's shoulders. She grabbed the wrist and found herself trapped between his arms, not ideal for cuffing them together, but give a feverish girl a break.

"Kinky," he said, and began to lean towards her, his disgusting mouth moving closer and closer. She knew better than to release his hands or turn her head away, but dear god no, get off! Ultimately, she pulled her leg up towards her in a literal knee-jerk reaction, throwing her off balance so that he was able to pull her down beneath him, shifting so that he was on top of her.

Apparently, he was rather turned on by women who found him repulsive. (Sort of made sense, since no one could actually be attracted to the man.) Or maybe he was just plain stupid. What did he think she was trying to do with the cuffs? Maybe she should tell him. But she was afraid to open her mouth because he was still vehemently trying to kiss her. Where the hell had LaSalle gone?

"Let's get outta here an' make the beast with two backs, baby."

Wow. A Shakespeare reference. She was impressed.

He probably didn't know where it came from.

Ack! She made a desperate whimpering-growling-moaning-stifled scream of disgust in her throat as Massey moved in so close that his nose brushed her cheek. The bar's smoky fog and pungent alcohol scent mingled with his overpowering cologne and stale sweat, making her stomach turn. Normally, she would've thrown the man over her head by now, sending him crashing to the ground, but her muscles were quivering, weak -definitely feverish. The trapped screams in her throat might have been forming the words _LaSalle! Help!_

"Ya mind gettin' yer skeezy ass off'n her?"

Oh thank god!

"Mind your own damned business!" Massey looked up and froze, recognition turning into terror as he tried to climb over Merri and bolt. Relieved that her backup had finally arrived, she let go of the man's cuffed hand and the bare wrist she'd dug her nails into, crying sharply when Massey's knee pressed into her wounded thigh. She threw her arms up to cover her face as LaSalle grabbed his traitorous former CI and hauled him off from her, the man's feet kicking and catching her in the ribs and the forearms as he was dragged out of the booth where he'd sort of pinned her down and was thrown to the floor.

By the time she straightened, her partner was informing 'Furious D' that he was under arrest for assaulting a federal officer. She wasn't sure if LaSalle meant when the man had struck him in the back of the head and locked him in a freezer or the little incident that had just occurred on that cracked old vinyl cushion.

The crowd had made a rather large clearing around the two agents and their prisoner, the noise level dropping to whispers and sniggering, people straining to see over each others' shoulders.

"Nothin' ta see here, people," Chris said, hauling Massey to his feet once more before giving Merri a severely worried glance. "Can ya make it back ta the SUV? Or should I stow him an' come back fer ya?"

"I'll be fine," she said, not at all believing it. Fuck, if she hadn't torn the stitches earlier, Massey's kneeling directly on her wound had surely reopened the wound. But hell if she was going to let an entire bar full of people think that the creep had bested her. She could hardly announce to the crowd that she had a pre-existing handicap in the form of a torn thigh, powerful painkillers, a fever and stitches that apparently hadn't held up.

She limped out behind her partner, placing a hand on his back for a guide since the room had begun to spin.

Fresh air. She just needed some fresh air.

The fresh air only helped a little as she leaned against the side of the vehicle, waiting for LaSalle to load their prisoner inside. Oh, shit, shit, shit-

"LaSalle."

Her voice was a hoarse whisper but his face filled her vision, eyes large with alarm as everything faded to black, her last thought a curse at fainting in front of her partner.

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**A/N: Two suspects in custody... Will they finally be able to put the pieces together?**


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: If you noticed, I kind of lost steam with this one. Wasn't feeling the pretty 'standard' style plot. But after bouncing around a few ideas with MKP, I was re-inspired. So this fic has sort of taken a left turn. But hopefully the twist will be enjoyable?**

* * *

Disorienting.

That was the word she was looking for, straining her mind to come up with, along with any sort of explanation for what her eyes and ears and nose, and skin was telling her. Obviously, all of her senses in conjunction with one another wouldn't be lying to her. Right?

So... Where the hell was she? And why did she have absolutely no memory of how she got here? Got into this white and blue room. Everything in it, the vanity in the corner with matching frilly covered stool, the little damask settee and coffee table, the screen room divider, the curtains, the toile wallpaper, the bedspread... her dress... all white with blue accents. It was... strange.

And this was most definitely not what she remembered wearing the last time she was, well, conscious. She threw the white-and-blue bedspread completely off from her revealing the rest of the white cotton dress with blue vines embroidered along the hem and the bodice. It was a simple cut, sleeveless and knee-length, little pearl buttons running down the front. Soft, high-quality cotton, a thread count on par with the sheets that felt almost like silk they were so smooth and soft.

Definitely nowhere she'd ever been before. Definitely not one of her dresses. Even though it fit her extremely well, hugging her bare breasts and sides, and when she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and got to her feet, fighting a wave of vertigo, the skirt draped over her equally naked hips and bottom, clinging just a little to her figure.

A dress that fit her. But no underwear.

"Well, that's certainly not a good sign," Merri said, her quiet voice sounding incredibly loud in the otherwise vacant, still room.

Her leg ached, but not as badly as it had been. She pulled the skirt up, examining her naked thigh. New stitches, thick and black holding the gash in her flesh closed. Actually, it appeared to be healing, pink and raw but not bloody or oozing. No longer requiring a bandage.

But despite the healing wound, her legs felt weak. So did her arms. And... There was a puncture mark in the back of her hand, she recognized as belonging to an IV needle. Was this some bizarre sort of hospital? Had LaSalle taken her to Miss Southern Bell's Sanitorium to convalesce? She tried the door, which was -damn- locked from the outside. Noticed a note taped to the white-washed wooden door. It was written in a neat, flourished scrawl.

_Dear Miss Meredith, _

_When you awake, please kindly ring the bell and a servant will be up to fetch you. _

_Your humble host, _

_Mssr. Beauchamps_

Wow. She really needed to wake up now. Because had she fallen down a rabbit hole or gone through the looking glass or something?

There was a blue rope (tassel and all) hanging beside the door, which she assumed was the bell pull. She didn't have much in the way of options, now did she? Except maybe checking the window that doubtless lay behind those white and blue toile drapes that precisely matched the wallpaper. But she didn't feel much like climbing through a window at the moment. And besides the nagging feeling of unease in the back of her mind, there was no blatant danger she could point to.

And where was LaSalle?

As promised, a servant did show up, a key clicking in the lock and then a light rap, begging entrance. Really? Knocking on a door locked from the outside?

"Um... Come in?" Merri said, feeling more than a vague sense of surrealism. Was she dreaming? Well, obviously she wasn't. She was clearly awake. The floor was cool beneath her bare feet, the air warm and scented with vanilla and moth balls.

Her unfamiliar surroundings were too detailed for her brain to have generated from scratch. As was the petite, olive-skinned woman who stood waiting at the threshold when she opened the door. Filipino, maybe. Dark hair, gentle dark eyes. And wearing a ridiculous grey maid's costume, complete with crisp white apron and frilly little cap.

"You are feeling well?" the woman asked, with what seemed to be some genuine concern.

"Yes, thank you," she said, going for casual with her tone and not 'completely freaked out', which she was. "May I ask... where am I?"

The maid hesitated. Apparently, she hadn't received instructions on answering Merri's questions.

"You are a guest of Monsieur Beauchamps. He requests the pleasure of your company for tea."

"Um...right now?" Merri asked, looking down at the thin white cotton dress covering her nakedness.

"Yes."

Wow. Helpful there. This was so fricken strange. She had might as well been completely naked, she felt so exposed and vulnerable. There was nothing she hated more than a lack of control over any given situation. And this, this was absolute powerlessness. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea what had happened to her. She didn't have her clothes, let alone her Glock or boot knife or her phone.

"Alright." Merri indicated for the servant to lead the way, following her out into an ornately decorated hall. But at least it wasn't an expanse of white with little blue idyllic scenes, she supposed. They passed by innumerable closed doors, turned down another hall, went down some stairs... Already feeling entirely disoriented, Merri quickly lost track. She wouldn't be able to find her way back to that -compared to the size of this place- little white room. Not that she had any reason to do so. Her things weren't there.

LaSalle wasn't there. Where the hell had he gotten his redneck ass to? Wasn't this whole over-the-top Southern hospitality thing in his purview? Was this just some twisted joke of his, dropping her off with friends, because teasing her for fainting on him wasn't going to be enough?

That was unfair.

This elaborate scheming wasn't his style. Not to mention how personally invasive it was to strip her naked and dress her up. No. The rationale her imagination desperately attempted to provide, to prevent her anxiety from exploding to unbearable levels, was not even remotely what was going on here. She knew it. And it made her stomach feel hollow.

Or was that the smell of sausage teasing a hunger in her as she followed the docile, reticent maid into a large room that could only be called a 'parlor'. It was well lit through tall glass windows, sported a presently cold fireplace, a sage velvet settee and matching chairs, a glass coffee table with a small tea service and a silver cart heaped with pastries, fruit and the sausages her nose had alerted her to. The object that immediately drew one's eye however was the man, who rose from one of the wing back chairs and brandished what could only be called a 'winning smile'. His teeth were white and perfectly aligned, his smile broad and disarming, forming little dimples in his cheeks. His blue-grey eyes were steady and confident. He was of an average height, an inch or two under six feet, handsome, and dressed in a classic white suit sans tie, impeccably tailored to his trim figure.

And Merri instantly disliked him.

"Miss Meredith Brody," he greeted her with a thick old money Louisiana accent. "So glad tuh see you up and about. Won't you join me for some tea? Cook has been kindly enough tuh heat up some of his freshly prepared _boudin rouge._"

He gestured to the settee. Merri considered being flippant and defiant. But what was the point? This man was obviously in charge, the one with the answers she wanted. So she walked around to settle herself on the small elegant sofa, making sure the scant cotton dress covered her knees which she kept firmly pressed together in her panties-less state. Although, he might have already seen everything.

But everything about the man said 'rich asshole' and Merri thought it far more likely he'd ordered a servant to handle her unconscious body. Probably even the petite maid who was currently fixing a plate with a scone, melon balls and strawberries, and the blood sausage (she had no intention of eating -some things were outside of her culinary adventurousness) which she brought over to Merri, before likewise fixing her a cup of tea. No questions as to her preference were asked. She had a feeling this wasn't a place where you were allowed to make your own decisions, or have your own opinion.

She was having tea with a dictator of his own little world. Sort of felt precisely like she was in an old plantation home sitting with the patriarch, about to receive terms.

"I ehm sure you have questions, Miss Meredith," he said, once the cup of tea had been placed in his guest's hands and the maid was dismissed with a wave of his.

"It's _Agent Brody_," she said, taking a sip of the far-too-sweet and far-too-milky tea. "And I would like to know where I am and how I got here."

"I imagine you would, my dear." Blatantly ignoring her official title and what she indicated would be her preferred form of address. Not surprising. But the lack of appeasement indicated a lack of friendly intent. She simply stared back into those blue-grey eyes. She could be as stubbornly patient as the most reticent of them. He took a sip of his own tea, placed the cup back in its saucer, set the saucer down on a side table. "You are at my home. As for how you came tuh be here, well... Let's just say I was feelin' inclined towards some acts of Good-Samaritanism."

Merri took a bite of her scone. If his intention was to get her frustrated and worked up, she wasn't about to oblige. The man was obviously going to take his own damn sweet time with his 'reveal'. An interrogator tactic, for certain. But more than that, he doubtless derived some sort of amusement from playing with others. The control he'd asserted thus far was undeniably an indicator of that.

"We found you, unconscious an' in uh bad way, outside of uh bar just outside of the French Quarter in New O'leans," he said, his blue-grey eyes studying her intently as she popped a strawberry in her mouth. Playing it cool and reserved definitely seemed the best course of action with the strange man.

"Why not take me to a hospital, then?" she asked, taking another sip of her milk-tea.

"Don't trust them instuh-tutions tuh lance uh boil, let uhlone treat uh woman sufferin' from an infected wound they obviously failed tuh properly treat the fuhrst time around." Oddly, he did have a point there, Merri supposed. "I had my puhsonal physician tend tuh yuh nasty gash there. Said you were on the vuhge of developin' a blood infection."

"I'll have to get his name and address from you so I can send him a thank you note," Merri said, unable to contain her sarcasm. This was so, so weird. With an underlying ominous tone. If the taste and texture of the food, the feel of the sun on her skin wasn't so acutely complex and real, she would think she _had_ succumbed to a blood infection and currently was in a coma.

"I am shuh the good doctor would say that seein' yuh back to the pic-shuh of health would be thanks enough." Mssr. Beauchamps, if that was his real name, leaned in, placing a hand on her injured leg, just below the healing wound, giving her thigh a familiar squeeze. It was all she could do not to flinch, or punch him in the face. She had a feeling that she didn't want to get on his bad side, however. And it was obvious that he was purposefully pushing her.

"Right before I fainted..." She opted to use the term, portraying herself as a 'delicate flower' somehow seemed appropriate in the presence of someone donning the facade of a Southern Gentleman. "I was with my partner. We'd just apprehended a suspect in the case we were working. Do you know what happened to them?"

He leaned back in his chair, made a thoughtful noise and an equally contrived contemplative expression.

"Don't rightly know, Miss Meredith. There weren't a soul in sight when we stumbled across yuh pretty self lookin' like snow white in her glass coffin even though you were lyin' in the street there."

_Bullshit._

"Are you sure?" She decided to press it, because they weren't getting anywhere. And her feeling of dread seemed to grow as the basic needs of her body for food and water had been satisfied. There was no way LaSalle had willingly left her lying unconscious in the street. "My partner's name is Chris LaSalle. He's about 5'9", 155 pounds. Brown hair. Blue eyes..."

Beauchamps was shaking his head, making that same fake thoughtful noise.

"That could be any numb-uh of gentleman I have encountuh'd in my life," he said. "But as I said, there weren't a soul around. That's why I felt it my duty tuh take you in, Miss Meredith."

Again, with the 'Miss Meredith'. He was patronizing her, pushing her, lying through his very straight, very white teeth. But what the hell was he after?

If he had her, then he had to have LaSalle, too. Unless... No. She wouldn't think that. Unless proven otherwise, she had to believe he was alive. She wanted to believe he was with Pride, searching for her. But, "How long has it been since you so generously took me in?"

"You've been in an' out of it, mostly out of it, for the past three days. The good doctor had tuh keep you sedated once yuh fevuh broke, tuh prevent you from tearin' out the lovely new stitches he put in."

_Bullshit. _Had he already tried a similar game with LaSalle? Had he been spending the past few days toying with her partner until deciding it was her turn?

"I want to see LaSalle," she said, dropping the amiable expression she'd been forcing herself to wear throughout the conversation so far. His genial expression remained, but it fled from his eyes. They were cold and hard, and Merri had only ever seen the like before in individuals who were sociopathic in some degree or another.

"As I already said, I _don't know _where yuh friend is. An' the fact that you are implyin' otherwise is quite offensive, considerin' all I have done for yuhself."

Her 'host' (was that still the correct term if your stay wasn't optional?) rose to his feet, and called out, "Pauline!"

It took less than ten seconds for the maid to arrive, the same one that had fetched Merri in the first place.

"Miss Meredith wishes tuh return tuh her room an' rest up until dinner is served."

She did? Well, obviously not a suggestion. This man did not make 'suggestions'. Demands, orders, yes. But not 'suggestions.' Merri got to her feet, followed 'Pauline' (that was most definitely not her real name) out of the parlor and back through the great house. She considered running off. Unarmed, the servant would not be difficult to shake. There were probably persons that served as guards or hired guns on the property. He was the type. She was making assumptions, yes, but by being so unreadable, Beauchamps was actually quite readable to her interrogator trained self. Sociopath, loved being in control, got pleasure out of messing with people. Whatever he was after (if there was anything specific at all, it had to do with Sidney Vincent's case), he was playing with her. And possibly with LaSalle, too. The bad part would come when the mind games weren't enough.

She should leave. Just walk out. He might even allow it. But in that case, LaSalle was as good as dead. She had a feeling that if they'd been grabbed outside the bar, Beauchamps got Massey, too, and the former CI-turned-suspect was likely already dead. That man was just an inconvenience. The fact that their captor had bothered to 'fix' Merri, have her infection treated... He was after something the federal agents possessed.

But if she escaped, if she went for backup, without LaSalle by her side, Beauchamps would kill him and get rid of the evidence. Coming back with a full tactical team and a warrant would do nothing. Not if her partner was already dead.

No. No, she'd have to play the long game. Hell, she'd been trained for patience as an interrogator. She could do it. Once she knew where and what shape her friend was in, then she'd take steps to get them out of this mess... Whatever sort of mess this was.

She considered asking 'Pauline' for help, to get a message to Pride. But her docility, her accepting, subservient manner reflected the loyal employee she was. The only kind a man like Beauchamps would keep, especially when he flaunted criminal activity like keeping a woman, a federal agent at that, locked in a room.

Yup, the audible click of the key turning informed Merri that she was still being kept locked up. Perhaps it was time to check the window and do a thorough search of the room. She had a feeling she wouldn't find anything-

Well, that was new.

A book had been placed in the middle of the now neatly made-up bed. (Definitely not how she left it). It was hardcover and looked to be an antique. She picked it up, an ironic laugh escaping through her nose in a snort.

Ann Radcliffe. _The Mysteries of Udolpho. _

Not very subtle, Mssr. Beauchamps.

* * *

**A/N: Will Brody figure out why she's ended up in the middle of what feels like a Gothic novel plot? Will she be able to find LaSalle? And who is the mysterious Beauchamps and what does he have to do with Sidney Vincent's case, if anything at all?**

**A/N2: Interested? Or is too weird of a twist? **


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: A slightly shorter chapter. Still setting up the tone, mystery and sinister nature of the villain…**

* * *

This guy was an expert manipulator, Merri concluded. There was no denying it. The way he had her exactly where he wanted her, vulnerable, without a single recourse. Well, any sensible one, anyway. It wasn't by accident that she was sitting at the opposite end of a long dining room table, wearing a slinky burgundy satin dress and being threatened in an extremely civilized subtle manner over the fish course.

The dress was regrettably sleeveless. And she still had not a stitch on in the way of undergarments. She wasn't self-conscious about it. It hadn't been her choice, after all. And she had more to worry about than whether her nipples were visible. What she disliked about being coerced into donning the fancy, low cut and backless evening gown sans even panties was that there was nowhere to hide the knife she was seriously considering absconding from the dinner table with.

"Are you going to get to the point tonight?" she asked, interrupting some inane tale about his family's historic plantation home, Harvester Valley . Did she not find it picturesque, a great legacy worth preserving, by whatever means necessary, blah, blah, blah...

He did not resume his veiled implications that she and LaSalle (not once referring to her missing partner) were somehow a threat to his family's great legacy, one he was not only obliged but happy to deal with. Instead, he cut a piece of the whitefish fillet with the edge of his fork, scooped it up, placing it in his mouth and chewing it slowly, his blue-grey eyes locked on her the entire time as he made an appreciative noise she could hear from several yards down the table. It was delicious, she had to admit. Flaking perfectly and melting on the tongue like butter.

She stared back as he followed his fish with a drink of wine. Which she assumed was equally exquisite, but was abstaining from herself. This man was tricky. He was urbane, manipulative. Not your run-of-the-mill street criminal or crime of passion murderer. Neither was he about to spill his evil plot for world domination like a narcissistic bond villain. But that wasn't to say this Monsieur Beauchamps wasn't a narcissist. Or a sociopath.

"I apol-uh-gize if my dinner con-vuh-sation has not been up tuh yuh standards, Miss Meredith." He smiled that unsettlingly perfect conman's smile. "Would you be so kind as tuh re-cuh-mend an alter-nuh-tive topic tuh explore?"

She knew he was trying to frustrate her to the point where she lost control over her emotions. She also knew that remaining steadfastly stubborn and unyielding would push him into attempting other methods to get her to talk, unpleasant methods. But maybe then, she'd find out what happened to her missing friend. Because if he tried playing Mr. Nice (and Manipulative) Guy with Chris LaSalle, that hadn't likely lasted long.

"Where is LaSalle?" She kept her voice even. Not nonchalant. But marshalling her acute worry, which had her stomach so twisted up in knots she'd barely picked at her food despite knowing she needed what sustenance she could get given an uncertain immediate future.

Beauchamps put his fork down.

"I em growin' weary of that par-ti-cu-lar line of questionin', Miss Meredith. Didn't yuh mama evuh teach you tuh stick tuh polite con-vuh-sation, such as the weathuh and a puhson's health?"

"Oh, I apologize," she said, plastering a big fake smile on her face, refusing to look away from those clever, sinister blue-grey eyes. "_How_ is LaSalle?"

Beauchamps laughed. It was the most fake laugh she'd ever heard, worse than that of businessmen kissing the CEO's ass. Perhaps because of the fake laugh's mere absurdity, it made her yearn to hear her partner's amused chuckle, all genuine good humor and accompanied by that beautiful goofy grin of his. LaSalle smiling and laughing was charming as hell. This man's false joviality sent a chill down her currently naked spine.

"I em beginnin' tuh think that you need yuh hearin' checked, my dear," he said, the 'amusement' blinking out in a fraction of a second. "Because like I have already told you upon sev'ral occasions, I do not possess any knowledge concernin' yuh friend's where-uh-bouts or activities."

Merri blinked. The light in the large dining room had shifted. Hadn't the sun already set, though, by the time she was woken and escorted to the bathroom to wash up and change for dinner?

"Why don't you regale me with uh tale," Beauchamps said, refocusing his attention on finishing up the remainder of the fillet on his plate. She could see the flash of the silverware but the room had taken on an unfocused sort of soft glow, and try as she might she couldn't quite make out the expression on his face. She'd felt dizzy and exhausted earlier, plopping down on the bed rather than thoroughly searching the blue and white room as she'd planned, thinking it was because her body had been fighting off an infection, pumped full of antibiotics, kept sedated and hadn't consumed any solid food in the past three days. But apparently it had been due to other, likely pharmaceutical influences. "Puh-haps if I have uh better pic-shuh of yuh partnuh, I might remembuh some detail I heretofore have fuh-gotten."

He wanted... He wanted... Her to tell him about LaSalle? God, she was thirsty. She reached for the water, knocked it over.

"Oops." Beauchamps got to his feet, walked around the table to her. "Let me assist you. I did not take you for a clumsy woman, Miss. Meredith."

He righted the glass, and there was still about half an inch of the clear liquid in the bottom. Merri licked her dry lips. She was very thirsty. She reached for the glass again, but Beauchamps caught her hand.

"I don't think you will be needin' any more of that." He deposited her hand in her lap and she couldn't quite find the will to lift it and punch the bastard in the face for drugging her. She blinked at him instead, trying to focus on his smug smile and cold, calculating eyes as he pulled her chair away from the table and crouched before her, studying her face. "Now, why don't you tell me what you and that tenacious partnuh of yuhs have been up tuh ovuh the past couple uh weeks?"

Ah. The truth. Finally. This was all because of the... the case... LaSalle's friend… What was his name? Um…

"What have... you... to..." Unconsciousness was beginning to descend upon her like the night sky at sunset.

"Well, damn," Beauchamps said, his face growing entirely cold in the glimpses she got between blinking, her eyes remaining closed longer than they were open. And then he was standing, shouting. "Who mixed our 'onuh'ed guest's cocktail?! You puht too damn much in!"

There was a slight sting on her cheek, causing her to jerk her head back up and open her eyes. Beauchamps slapped her lightly again.

"I uh-pol-uh-gize, Miss Meredith. Good help is so veruh diff-uh-cult tuh find nowadays. If one wants somethin' done right, it seems one must do so oneself."

"Wouldn't... talk... anyway," she said, helpfully excusing whatever apparently inept assistant who'd fixed her spiked water. That's what that slice of lemon had been for, apparently, hiding the… the taste… of the…

She lost consciousness.

* * *

**A/N: I already have the next chapter partly written, so I can guarantee you that we find out what Beauchamps is specifically after **_**and **_**what's happened to LaSalle.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note: Finally, some answers… Sort of… ;-)**

* * *

Ugh. Merri was getting extremely sick of this dance. She'd woken up in that damned white and blue room again, wearing that damned white and blue dress, tucked under those damned white and blue covers. Her head had been pounding with a splitting headache, but she'd learned her lesson and left the glass of water beside her bed untouched.

Untouched. She had taken an internal inventory of sorts, sighed in relief when she swiped a hand between her bare thighs just to be certain she hadn't been messed with, as well as drugged. But honestly, her host didn't seem the type to rape an unconscious woman. That wasn't to say she didn't think he was capable of committing such a terrible act of violation. He certainly was sadistic enough. But he was also a narcissist. She had no doubt that if that malicious, controlling man wanted to rape her, she'd be wide awake and completely aware.

Somewhat reassured, despite the pounding headache, she'd performed a search of the room. Nothing useful, unless she'd started breaking apart the furniture. But that kind of racket would've certainly attracted attention. Pulling the drapes back, she'd checked the window. Which had been permanently sealed shut. The view from the second story had been precisely what she'd expected. Well, maybe a bit more breathtaking, a manicured garden directly behind the big house and beyond the hedgerows, the valley spreading out below, overgrown fields and woods beyond. There were at least a dozen outbuildings that she could see, knew by their simple, old style construction and lack of fencing or other markers of private space, that they belonged to the plantation estate. LaSalle could be being held in any of them. Hell, for all she knew, he could be in the large house that she'd only seen just a fraction of.

This morning -well, afternoon, since she'd apparently been unconscious for 15 hours- she was being 'entertained' in the study. A room like the parlor, with large south-facing windows, but twice its size, the walls lined with bookshelves. According to the 'small talk' of the day, the size and scope of the family's collections was thank to Beauchamps' great uncle Obadiah, who'd indulged in curating his own curios as well as the library. Several butterfly trays were pulled out for her perusal as the origin of the plantation's name was explained as not being dubbed 'Harvester Valley' for its abundant production of various cash crops over the years but for the butterflies that swarmed about the creek.

Merri waited patiently for Beauchamps to come to the point. Well, outwardly patient. But inwardly, she was feeling quite the opposite, for a number of good reasons. Anxiety and fear had even begun to worm their way in, perhaps which was why she didn't push or press her captor to _get to the fucking point already_. She admittedly was dreading what would happen next, since his drugging of her hadn't yielded the results he wanted. Also, today, there were two very large men standing guard just outside of the study door.

She was glad she'd talked Pauline into taking her to the bathroom so that she could relieve her full bladder and drink as much clean water from the faucet as she could swallow. For she was most definitely being impolite and not consuming anything that had been set before her. She was also refusing to respond to anything Beauchamps said. Although, he was basically just droning on in one of his monologues, which would be utterly dull if there wasn't this sinister, threatening undertone to his smooth Southern cadence. And those blue-grey eyes studying her with cold regard, almost as if he were trying to figure out the best way to take her apart and put her back together again.

"So you see, my de-uh Miss Meredith, _collectin'_ runs in the fam'ly." He gave her a smug smile. "An' while I em well-vuhsed in the entomological and bibliophiliac varieties of collectin', I spe-shuh-lize in cure-atin' human bein's."

Okay. So she wasn't able to marshal her reaction that time, her eyes going wide and her brows making their way up her forehead, as she pictured what the cellar or attic or one of those out buildings might hold, bodies in various stages of decomposition.

Beauchamps chuckled in that fake way of his.

"Oh, no. Nothin' so grue-some as it sounds, my de-uh lady. My collection is uh live one, I can guar-uhn-tee you that."

She felt as if he was approaching the point. Hopefully, very soon they would arrive there. Whether or not Merri really wanted to visit the destination, however, was another question entirely.

"So when one uh my del-uh-cuht specimens is puht all outta sorts, well it's only natural that I see tuh rightin' the problem myself."

Now he finally had Merri's full attention. In his immensely convoluted way, the man was telling her that one of the many people, likely politicians and other officials, he had in his pocket (or 'collection' as he seemed to prefer), had something to do with Sidney Vincent's death. LaSalle looking into the supposedly closed case had riled the real criminal. And he had gone to his 'curator', asking for help, for the problem to go away.

Well, neither of them knew who they were trying to mess with. Chris LaSalle was indeed as Beauchamps had described him, _tenacious_. And Merri knew her faults, that she could be extremely stubborn. And then there was Pride, who maybe hadn't been caught up by Beauchamps' net, and would be working tirelessly to locate his missing agents. God, the fact that it'd been so long. The loyal and passionate senior agent should be busting through the door at any moment.

Unless the curator really was that good at 'maintaining' his collection.

"What I require from you…" He placed a notepad on the tea table in front of her, along with a felt-tip marker. Merri had to admit, he was a thinker. She couldn't probably break the skin with the children's marker, not like if she was given a pencil or a pen that she could do some serious stabbing with. Clever bastard. "…is uh complete list of the evidence you and yuh partnuh have collected thus fah, and way-uh such evidence is located."

Okay. So the moment was here. Try to be strong, Merri. For LaSalle.

She pushed the pad of paper and blue Crayola marker back across the table to sit in front of Beauchamps, whose fake genial smile flickered off entirely. And then she got to her feet.

"Here's what I require from you," she said, locking eyes with those cold, unsettling blue-grey ones. "A complete list of the 'specimens' in your collection, including the names of those responsible for the crimes for which Sidney Vincent was convicted and the perpetrators of his murder. You will then turn over Christopher LaSalle, surrender yourself into our custody and provide a phone for us to call in your arrest. In return, NCIS will request a lighter sentencing for your cooperation."

Beauchamps just stared at her in complete silence for several moments, his arm still casually draped across the back of the red velvet settee, one leg crossed over the other as he reclined. Merri refused to crack. She wouldn't give the smug, superior bastard the satisfaction. She meant what she'd said, damn it. Those were her terms, the only terms she would accept. Okay, the only one she really cared about was getting LaSalle back, but her captor didn't need to know that. Fuck, he probably already did know that, the way he was studying her intently even while his body language remained seemingly so casual.

"Ah you suh-tain you wish tuh call an end tuh our negotiations on this mattuh, Miss Meredith?"

She swallowed, knowing it wouldn't go unnoticed, a sign of her anxiety, but at the same time having no choice but to attempt to clear the obstructive lump that had formed in her throat.

"Those are my terms," she said. "And it's _Agent Brody_."

Beacuhamps got to his feet, calling out for his goons. "Mist-uhs Crawford and Wright, if you puh-lease."

Merri found herself swallowing involuntarily again as the two large men appeared in the door of the study, not able to pass through the double-wide doorway at the same time for the bulk of muscle on them. Maybe if she were in perfect health, top form, she could take down one of them, if she got the jump on him, had the element surprise and was able to cleanly incapacitate him without meeting any resistance. As soon as the brute had opportunity to fight back, she'd already be done, however. But that was _if _she was in perfect health. Which she most certainly wasn't. But look on the bright side, as Beauchamps helpfully pointed out,

"_Agent Brody _would like tuh be taken tuh see her friend."

"Boss?" the uglier of the two not very attractive men asked. Okay, that was unfair. They were sort of just average barrel-chested guys with ginormous arms and legs, and necks thicker than her thighs. She was deducting credit on terms of inner beauty because they had to be all kinds of unpleasant if they worked for a sociopath like Beauchamps, doing his dirty work.

"We shall all escort huh, consid-uh-in' how pair-uh-lous the grounds can be," he said, clasping his hands together before gesturing towards the door. "It is the gentlemanly thing tuh do, is it not?"

Brute 1 and Brute 2 nodded their heads before parting to allow their boss to proceed ahead. It was the oddest sort of parade that Merri never wanted to be a part of, marching out of the great house, which she finally got a true glimpse of, and had to admit it was rather beautiful. But her instincts had been right. LaSalle wasn't being held in the sprawling plantation house with white washed pillars, balconies and all.

They led her out, past a few outbuildings towards a field that was no longer being used for crops, overgrown with tall grass and wild flowers. Panic choked her. Were they leading her out to be executed and dumped in a shallow grave, one that already held her poor, murdered friend?

She fought it down, along with the urge to struggle with her captors or run off, because the more rational part of her mind informed her that Beauchamps was more than willing to try means besides painfully dry civility and drugging to get her to talk. There were probably many more things he would try before his resources were exhausted. No. They weren't taking her out back to shoot her. But did that mean they wouldn't try to break her by showing her the lifeless corpse of her partner?

_Please. Please be okay, LaSalle._

Pride would never forgive her if she let the young man die.

She would never forgive herself.

They paused seemingly in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the manicured lawn beside the overgrown field.

"Mr. Crawford, would you be so kind as tuh fetch uh wakeup call?" Beauchamps sent on of the Brute Twins off, which did indeed prove Merri's odds a little if she chose to fight. But she still didn't have eyes on LaSalle. Where the- _Oh._

Beauchamps crouched down, and she finally noticed that it wasn't just grass on the ground in front of her bare toes. There was a plank of what she thought must be metal, painted a dark mottled green and black, which actually didn't blend in the with the rest of the manicured grass now that she knew it was there. She needed to get her head on straight, pay attention to the world around her, be situationally aware.

A jangling noise drew her attention to Beauchamps who had pulled a hefty ring of keys from his grey suit coat pocket and was fiddling them. Why? Oh, right. Pay attention, Merri! There were a series of latches running along the long edge opposite hinges, all padlocked shut. Was this an entrance to some sort of underground bunker where the sociopathic aristocrat did his 'interrogating?'

Brute #2 showed up with a couple pails of water, setting one of them on the ground. Merri watched in confused and anxious anticipation as Beauchamps proceeded to remove the padlocks, getting to his feet and dusting off his grey trousers after tucking the keys away in -Merri made a note- his right jacket pocket. He signaled for Brute #1 to do the honors, and the big looming presence at her back finally shifted, but didn't make her feel at all relieved.

Even with her injured leg, she probably could outrun these giant lugs. How fast could they be? But Beauchamps winked at her, knowing that she was held in place, literally captivated, because she couldn't abandon her partner.

Brute#1 lifted the metal trap door throwing it over on the grass and -_oh, god, LaSalle._

He was curled up in a little ball inside the small metal box, his naked skin coated in sweat, flushed with blotchy red patches. Heat rash. But if he was still sweating, he wasn't suffering full heat stroke yet. He was trembling, however, which was likely emotionally rather than environmentally induced.

Had he been out here the entire time? It was going on four days. Four days locked in a little metal box, which despite being sunk into the ground looked to be uncomfortably hot.

She instinctively surged forward, wanting to come to her friend's aide, but Brute #1 grabbed her arms and held her back as Brute #2 splashed the entire bucket of water on the little metal box's prisoner making him jerk and cry out as the shock tore him from whatever delirious and unconscious state he'd been in.

"Good mornin'. Or should I say 'Aftuh-noon', Mr. LaSalle," Beauchamps greeted his sluggishly-reluctant guest as he was hauled out of the box by Brute #2 to stand on what were obviously weak legs. The big man was undeniably holding the hyperthermic one up. The maltreatment was inescapably apparent for his nakedness. Already a lean man, his body had consumed the little fat there'd been on his frame and turned to breaking down muscle, leaving his flesh looking somewhat sunken. It wasn't extreme. And no one would've noticed if they hadn't spent nearly every day with the man over the past year. But Merri could tell he wasn't at all healthy, that he hadn't been given anything to eat over the past few days. They had to have been giving him water, however. Or else he would be dead.

"Has the defi-uhnce been sweated outta you yet, Mr. LaSalle?" Beauchamps asked, condescending smile on his face, as he leaned a little closer to his captive. "You shew-uh stink like it, suhn. Give 'im another rinse, Mr. Crawford"

The big man removed his hands from under LaSalle's arms and the fatigued agent crumpled to the ground before having the other bucket of cold water dumped over him, making him shiver as he lay in the grass.

"Leave him alone," Merri said before she could contain her desperation. She needed to get her friend out of here. He needed a fricken hospital... again. He'd been hospitalized for a concussion and mild hypothermia just over a week ago. There was no way his body could handle having its thermal regulation thrown off again like this, let alone being starved and cramped up, locked in a dark, hot box.

LaSalle's head jerked, she realized in response to the sound of her voice. His eyes were still squeezed tightly shut against the bright afternoon sun after spending so long in the dark. But he alternated opening one eye and then the other, squinting as he tried to look up at the group of people standing over him, tried to find her.

"Yes, we have uh lady in our comp'ny," Beauchamps said, tossing a pair of white linen drawcord pants at the naked and wet man shivering on the ground despite the heat rash on his neck and chest. "Make yuhself decent, hillbilly."

Her always so capable partner struggled with his obviously weak limbs to put the pants on, and Merri looked away, feeling like her presence was only adding to the humiliation he was suffering. And she was certain the treatment he'd received during his stay at Harvester Valley was entirely designed to that end, to degrade him, wear him down. He probably hadn't fought or run either even when the chance presented itself, because of her. Because Chris LaSalle was a loyal and loving friend, and wouldn't leave her to an unknown fate.

Quite a pair, they were.

"Now that everyone is presen-tuh-ble, shall we ruh-tire somewhere more private to convuhse?"

Apparently, not an invitation to be refused, for the pair of agents were shoved along by the Brute Twins. Well, Merri was shoved. LaSalle was sort of drag-carried, since his legs were apparently still non-functional from being cramped up in that hellish box. And however relieved she was to see with her own two eyes that her friend was alive, a very large knot of dread was taking hold of her insides.

For she well knew whatever trials they'd already experienced was mere foreplay for the sadistic sociopath. He fully intended to break them. And Merri had doubts even now that they were together, given their sorry states, that they could make it out of Harvester Valley alive.

* * *

**A/N: What does Beauchamps have planned for our poor, abused duo? Now that they're together, can they survive, maybe even escape? And why hasn't Pride saved his missing agents yet?**

**A/N2: Opinions on whether I should add in more little hints of Cherri? Besides Brody's slight attraction to LaSalle?**


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note: Reunited… but for better or for worse? **

**This fic is still hovering at friendship-plus, as I like to call it, giving them a slightly closer relationship than in the canon (especially in season two where TPTB seem determined to have no personal interaction between Brody and LaSalle whatsoever, which is a damned shame because they were so much fun even on just a friendly level).**

* * *

Merri thought that maybe the parlor, dining room and library settings hadn't been so bad, ostentatious and Gothic-like though they were. Because this, this was blatantly sinister. The sort of place that raised the hairs on the nape of a person's neck just by existing. All that terrible history, she supposed.

The old slave house unsurprisingly sported a morose interior. If one could even call it a 'house'... 'Quarters' was perhaps more appropriate. But that conjured images of barracks, big sprawling buildings, which this was not. Who knew how many people had been crammed into the small, dark space with its dirt floors, smelling of must and mold? There were just two small windows and they'd been thrown open to let in air and light as the party took up negotiations within its depths.

Merri also doubted the veracity of using terms such as 'party' and 'negotiations'. But how else to describe the unpleasant scene that played out in the haunted old place? They were sat around a square, extremely worn rough-cut board table in a mix-matched set of chairs (as far as she could make out in the dim light of the 'windows' and the electric lantern one of the Brute's had hung on a nail in the low ceiling rafters). The two mindless and muscular minions stood, which was surprising in that they didn't have to stoop as cramped as the little old building was.

Beauchamps had pulled a bottle of Perrier out of a cooler that had been pre-stashed in the building, along with other items, including the plastic cup (that resembled a fancier glass- no solo cups on the Harvester Valley estate, nosiree) that he poured the clean, pure water into, placing it before LaSalle, who did indeed look beyond thirsty.

"Help yuhself," Beauchamps had said, before delving into his 'collecting spiel' once more. Merri zoned out through most of the garrulous speech, her attention entirely drawn by her yet suffering friend, who was more or less being held upright in his chair by Brute#2's large mitts on his shoulders.

Or maybe he was playing possum?

She couldn't draw his eye despite how much she willed him to look at her, to engage her in some sort of silent communication. And yet he seemed to be alert enough, if physically exhausted, his blue eyes opened wide and glaring at their captor-host.

"An' this one I think you might enjoy. _Morpho polyphemus_... " Beauchamps held up the second glass-enclosed insect tray that had been set on the smallish wooden table, along with a kit of tools, which he'd already run through, laying out needles, probes and pins with an indifference that belied the inherent threat in such shiny and sharp objects. "Ruh-mind you of suhm-one? The cuh-luh of sweet cream uh-centu-a-ted by rich, dark cho-cuh-late."

When LaSalle gave no reaction whatsoever, the coolly antagonistic man continued. "You would have me buh-lieve that yuhve nevuh uh-precciated this fine spe-suh-muhn."

He turned to Merri, let his eyes roam over her body in such a lewdly appraising manner, she couldn't fight the blush of shame and anger from coloring her face. The creep had never focused his civilized-yet-threatening manner on her in a sexual context before. The lack of underwear had certainly been disconcerting, but she had come to think of it as a practicality, to prevent her from stashing potential weapons on her person. Now, now she wasn't so sure he wouldn't abuse her in such a way. Except...

LaSalle made a noise she'd never heard from the younger man before. It could be described as nothing other than a growl, the kind of warning rumble of an upset and overprotective canine. She looked at him, half-expecting to see his lips pulled back, baring his teeth in a snarl. But his expression was as firmly set in indifference, except for his eyes which were fixed unwaveringly on Beauchamps with the kind of ire she'd never before seen in her friend.

"I was hopin' tuh puh-haps add such an undeni-uh-bly beautiful crea-chuh tuh my collection, along with yuhself, Mr. LaSalle, uh-course," Beauchamps said, staring down the younger man whilst talking about Merri like she wasn't there, wasn't anything more than an object to be bartered for. Which, she considered may or may not be how the sociopathic aristocrat thought of her. She had no doubt the man did not care for her or LaSalle more than the items that filled his large house (probably less than some of his material possessions). But treating her as something he might use and abuse solely for his entertainment, she could tell, was only a means to irritate her friend, to work at his somewhat stolid exterior.

"But alas, spendin' the past few days uh-cquaintin' myself with the pair uh you, I have come tuh the realization that you would not make verra useful spe-suh-muhns fuh my collection. Stuh-born tuh a fault. Misplaced loyality..." Beauchamps released a theatrical sigh. "The only use I have fuh the two of you is tuh obtain the infuhmation needed to ease my _loyal_ spe-suh-muhn's mind."

"Why don't you have uh drink uh that wat-uh?" He waved a hand nonchalantly at the yet untouched glass sitting on the table before LaSalle before he leaned over, opening the large picnic hamper to produce a blank legal pad and felt-tip marker. He set it n the table, beside his array of entomological tools.

"Once more, I am askin' you tuh pruh-vide uh complete list of evidence on yuh partnuh -oh, pardon me, Miss Meredith- yuh _formuh _partnuh's case and the locations of said evidence. "

LaSalle said nothing, just glared. Beauchamps looked to his other captive.

"My terms stand," Merri said, trying to get a read on their captor's reaction to their recalcitrance. And failing. He seemed neither pleased or displeased. At least his eyes remained disaffected, cool and calculating even as he turned his palms up, shrugging a little, as if washing his hands of the consequences. And then he changed the subject with such easy skill, one would think he'd been trained as newscaster specializing in smooth segues.

"It seems tuh me that Mr. LaSalle is havin' some dif-uh-culty managin' his limbs," Beauchamps said, now focusing on Merri instead of her partner, feigned concern forming a frown on his lips that didn't touch those cold eyes of his. "Why don't you help 'im with that there glass of watuh?"

Whatever his game was, she wasn't especially inclined to play along. Only, LaSalle... He was in rough shape despite the stubborn anger apparently holding him together. His lips were so chapped, they were visibly cracked and bleeding. He really wasn't going to last long if he didn't get some water in him. But be it stubborn pride, or Beauchamps was right about him being unable to lift his arms, that tall glass of clear cool water was just sitting on the rough wooden table top, a torment she couldn't imagine to a man who'd gone beyond the realms of thirsty.

Merri pushed her chair back, meaning to go around to LaSalle's side and help him take a drink, but Beauchamps stopped her by abruptly kicking his foot out to halt the slide of her chair.

"From there is perfectly fine, Miss Meredith."

She hesitated. The sociopath was unreadable. Whatever he was doing, it wasn't going to end well, she knew. But if his focus was on herself, it wasn't directly on LaSalle. And she'd take that, and everything it entailed.

Her fingertips almost brushed the water glass when their captor's hand shot out, grabbed her wrist in a vice like grip, forced her palm to the table as he stabbed her with one of the long needle-like entomological implements he'd laid out on the table top. She cried out more with the shock of it then any pain. That came a fraction of a second later and was so exquisite she jerked her hand in response. Only Beauchamps was still holding her wrist firmly in place on the tabletop.

Son of a bitch! She should've grabbed it and stabbed him with it right after he'd laid the damned sharp tools out!

"I would stay verra still if I was you," he said, running the fingers of his free hand up and down the slim wooden handle of the thin spike that had been driven through the center of her hand, and into the table beneath, pinning it there like one of the butterflies in those glass cases. "You see, my gran-mama taught me how tuh presuhve the pretty little wonduhs nature has ta offuh. You must be careful when piercing their del-uh-cut bodies not tuh damage the struct-shuh or the uh-ppealin' featch-uhs. I was always good at that aspect uh collectin'."

He traced the now protruding, unpunctured vein along the top of her hand with the tip of a finger.

"As it stands, no real dam-uhdge has been done tuh this lovely hand of yuhs, my pretty _Morpho polyphemus_. So don't go ruinin' my beautiful work, now. Stay verra still."

She stared back into those cold blue-grey eyes until he inclined his head slightly, releasing her wrist. It was a battle not to flinch, not to yank the needle out of her hand. Because, fuck, how it hurt! It was worse than that time she got shot in the arm. Worse than ripping her thigh open on that nail. But contemplating what he'd do to her if she did try to pull it out... Or if he might try to play his little entomology game with LaSalle instead... She remained still.

As for LaSalle's part, he was currently being restrained, held in place in his chair across the table from her by Brute #2 (The other muscular goon twin was hovering behind her, making her primal brain beyond 'on edge' even as the majority of her nerves were screaming about the pain). Her friend had apparently reacted badly to her being stabbed in the hand. And he was still jerking every so often, testing the hold his captor had on his shoulders.

"Drink the watuh, Mr. LaSalle." Having successfully subdued Merri, Beauchamps had turned his attention back to her partner. "I will not have you expirin' before I get the in-fuh-mation I want from you."

LaSalle's expression hardened. Stubbornness. It was definitely stubborn defiance that had the physically exhausted man refusing to drink the water his body so desperately needed. Merri caught his eyes, glared.

_Just drink it, damn it._

His blue gaze, as intensely sapphire as it ever was, slipped from her own, she followed it to where their tormentor was toying with the other long-handled thin needle tool, resembling nothing more than a surgeon's probe, which was probably why it slid so easily through her flesh. His fingers casually drifted over the row of menacingly sharp pins.

LaSalle reached for the glass, raised it to his lips and took a sip. Despite being forced to it, obviously viewing it as a defeat, his eyes closed and a look of relief passed over his face as he swallowed. At least he knew better than to gulp it down. In his hyperthermic and starved state, it would just all come back up again.

"Good," Beauchamps clapped his hands together. "Now let us try an' at least co-op-uh-rate, even if we ah havin' uh dis-uh-greement. Negotiations don't wuhk if the parti-suh-pants quit talkin' tuh each othuh."

Merri ground her teeth. It was difficult to concentrate with the throbbing in her hand. She only wanted to cradle her injured limb to her chest, but she had to remain still. Because somehow they _would_ get out of this alive. And she rather not have a permanently fucked up hand. Her right hand, too. Sadistic son of a bitch. But it could be worse. Hell, LaSalle had had it worse, roasting in that dark metal hole in the ground.

"We ain't given ya nothin'," LaSalle said, the first words she'd heard him speak in days. His voice was so hoarse and quiet that it was unrecognizable.

"Now, now, Mr. LaSalle. Don't be too hasty." Beauchamps wagged his finger in a mock scolding gesture. "You haven't heard my _uh-mended _tuhms yet."

LaSalle glared.

Beauchamps grinned.

"He-uh is what's on offuh," he said. "You pruh-vide me with uh complete list of evidence an' nobody has to be hurt any furthuh."

"Don't tell him anything," Merri said before LaSalle could respond. "He's just going to kill us once he gets what he wants."

The look in LaSalle's eyes informed her that of course he already knew that, and he was too damned pissed off to submit anyway. The corner of her mouth twitched. She couldn't help it. Maybe the endorphins her body had begun pumping out to quell the pain in her hand had gone to her head. Maybe she was just too damned relieved to find her friend alive and somehow still lively. Either way, she wound up smiling -a ridiculous, giddy smile- at him. He grinned back, not quite managing to muster his standard, full-blown goofy grin, but doing a pretty good approximation of it.

"I'm glad you both ah findin' this so amusin'," Beauchamp said, and then in that lightening quick way of his, stabbed Merri with a pin. She cried out again with the shock of it, breathed purposefully slowly through her nose against the pain, glanced up to see LaSalle being slammed back down into the solid wooden chair, struggling briefly, futilely against Brute #2's beefy hands and arms.

It was just like acupuncture, Merri tried to convince herself (acupuncture gone horribly wrong), as she studied the head of the pin protruding from between the knuckles of her index and middle fingers, a small trickle of blood welling against her normally fair, now especially pale skin. There was a stream of it across the back of her hand from the Needle. And she could feel the wet, warm fluid pooling beneath her palm.

"Ah you through tryin' tuh be cute?" He asked after both of his victims seemed to calm down again and were glaring at him. "Because before you get too pleased with yuhselves, you need tuh realize that _I_ em the one holdin' all the high cahds.

"What you've experienced thus far, is _nothin'_ in the vast rep-uh-twa uh agony I have at my disposal. I could make you beg fuh death."

His blue-grey eyes bore through Brody's brown ones, but she refused to let any of the fear she felt show. Instead, she focused on her anger, poured it into her gaze before Beauchamps gave LaSalle the same cold, unflinching treatment. The man was most certainly a sociopath.

"But I know neithuh one of you would talk, with yuh ri-diculous sense of pride, vanity, moral suh-peer-ree-or-uh-ty…" He laughed derisively. "…_righteousness_."

"You haven't exactly given us any incentive to give you the information you want," Merri said through gritted teeth.

"Too true, Miss Meredith," he said. "Too true."

"Alright. Now that I have both of yuh undivided uh-ttention, I'll give you the incentive you uh-pair-uhnt-ly ah in dire want of...

He grinned, no longer a fake charming expression, but that of a wolf eyeing its dinner.

"Whoevuh talks is the one who will be tortuh-ed."

LaSalle's brow furrowed momentarily, reflecting Merri's own complete confusion.

"I think ya got that backwards," her partner said.

"No, I most suh-tainly have not." Beauchamps' wolfish grin intensified to shark-like. Saying that it was an unsettling sight was a massive understatement. "Because havin' gotten tuh know the pair of you ovuh the past few days, it is quite obvious, even tuh the most oblivious of ob-suh-vuhs, that yuh weakness is each oth-uh."

The bottom of Merri's stomach dropped out, opening a void inside of her. Shit. She shouldn't have asked after LaSalle so damn much. She'd let it show. She'd let everything show. A glance at the man whose importance to her she never should've revealed, confirmed he was dreading the coming threat as much as she was.

"So, my dea-uh guests..." Beachamps resumed his threat with that pleased, wolfish grin of his. "Whichevuh one is the fuhst to give me the in-fuh-mation I want, gets the privelege of sparin' their count-uh-part from suff-uh-rin' unfathomable horruhs."

"And if neither of us talks?" LaSalle asked in a tone that implied that would be the most likely scenario.

"Then I guess we'll have tuh continue on as we have been, only with uh more intensuhv cuh-riculum."

Merri had had enough of this arrogant, sadistic maniac's posturing. She grabbed the handle of the needle and yanked it from the wooden table and her hand, releasing an alarming spurt of blood that she chose to ignore as she simultaneously shoved her chair back with such force she rammed it into Brute #1's midsection and legs. There was the satisfying sound of his falling backward onto his ass with a grunt of pain and shock, but she was too busy lunging at Beauchamps to gloat for even a millisecond.

Even with the lightening-quick reflexes the man had demonstrated when stabbing her earlier, she was able to take him by surprise. Apparently, he hadn't expected her to do something so grisly as rip a sharp implement from her hand, pounce on him, get him into pretty good hold, her right arm across his chest, her injured hand bleeding onto his grey suit jacket as she held the equally bloody tool (which was rather like a mini-ice pick) to his throat with her left hand.

"I'm _amending_ my terms, too, Mr. Beauchamps."

* * *

**A/N: Brody's made her move. But will it really be so easy to escape? **


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note: Not sure why it took me so long to get this updated finished up. Because it's my favorite scene so far. ;-)**

* * *

"Not too hasty, Miss Meredith," her captive captor said, his voice only slightly strained by the hold she had on him, the probe already soaked with her own blood pressing against the jugular vein in his neck. She instantly saw what he meant as her gaze fell on her partner. She'd been too preoccupied with getting a firm hold on Beauchamps and putting her back to a wall to see the Brute haul LaSalle out of his chair, and press a large hunting knife to his naked stomach. Blood was already welling against the sharp edge, bright red on the pale skin, dewing on the light brown hair surrounding his navel.

She locked eyes with her partner, seeing her own fear reflected back at her. And at the same time, that defiance he'd shown since the moment he'd been dragged out of the hot box and sat in front of a glass of water he refused to drink. His intense blue eyes were telling her not to back down.

"Let him go," she said, her voice loud, authoritative, nearly two-decades of federal agent experience kicking in automatically. "Or I kill your boss."

The expression on the Brutes' faces didn't change. But Brute #1 stopped edging towards her. As for Beauchamps, he felt almost relaxed in her hold. He was lucky that her own nerves were confined to her churning stomach and not causing her hand to shake and stab him. Again, thanks to years of training in handling firearms under pressure.

"I would laugh, darluhn," Beauchamps said, a frustrating level of calm in his voice. "But I em uh-fraid that would end our con-vuh-sation pre-muh-chuh-ly.

"Which would not be all that ben-uh-ficial fuh Mr. LaSalle, eithuh."

Merri swallowed, her eyes unavoidably drawn to the small stream of blood flowing down her friend's stomach, reaching the white linen of his pants and spreading like the petals of a rose in bloom.

"Yuh see, Miss Meredith..." Beauchamps sure liked to talk. God, she was so sick of his smooth Old Louisiana accent. And so many fucking words. A constant stream of them. She wanted to go home, crawl into her bed and listen to the muffled wordless pulse of the city. "My faithful employees here may not espe-shuh-ly care uh-bout my duhmise. But they will not hez-uh-tate tuh kill Mr. LaSalle an' yuhself once I em dead.

"Yuh see, they are what is commonly refuhed tuh as 'wacko'." Beauchamps turned to one of said 'wackos'. "Psychopathic, puh-haps would be the more PC tuhm?"

Brute #1 grunted, apparently in agreement.

"The point bein' that they_ like _killin' an' only the exor-buh-tant pay I give them keeps their blood lust in line."

Merri swallowed. This was quite the stand-off, she supposed. And to look at the Brute Twins' soulless eyes, one set grey, one set brown, well, there was quite a bit of evidence to support Beauchamps' assertion. She sort of felt like killing the arrogant asshole out of spite. Even if it meant that knife already slicing into LaSalle's skin would sink in deep and with a quick jerk of a hand, disembowel her dear friend, directly before one or both of them came for her, an onslaught she wouldn't be able to fend off in her state, on her own.

Shit.

If it had just been her...

LaSalle's blue eyes were still passionate as she dared meet his gaze once more. Still defiant. He didn't want her to surrender.

But she couldn't let him be gutted right in front of her. Even if she wouldn't have to live with the guilt of it very long. She couldn't let him die. He was the best person she knew. Sweet, loyal, compassionate, tough, protective. He _protected_ people, saved them, with his work as an investigator or even just with a smile that brightened an otherwise hopelessly bleak day. She couldn't be responsible for the world losing him.

She dropped her arm, tossing away the thin metal spike with a clatter as it hit the table and rolled off onto the floor. And then Beauchamps was whirling on her, smacking her in the side of the face so hard she stumbled, prevented from falling to the rough earth floor by a sharp tug on her short hair that made her cry out.

"I have got her, Mistuh Wright," Beauchamps said, and the very large man stopped a couple feet in front of Merri as she was hauled up, arm twisted painfully behind her back with the surprisingly strong grasp of the refined 'Southern Gentleman'. His other firm grip was still tangled into her hair, which while short was apparently long enough to be painfully pulled on.

"Ev'ry mastuh knows such misbehav-yuh must be puh-nished tuh maintain orduh." His voice was honey-smooth in her ear but soured her stomach, sent chills down her spine. He spun her towards the open door, marched her out. "Mistuhs Wright and Crawford, bring Mistuh LaSalle and the toolkit, if you puhlease."

God, it hurt. She'd used the hold on any number of suspects, but never this harshly. It felt as if her shoulder was being dislocated as she was herded out into the bright sunshine.

And blue skies.

What the hell was that about? She felt a little betrayed by the world going on so merrily about them as they were threatened and abused. God, her free hand was the one that had been stabbed. It was throbbing all the way up her forearm. Otherwise she'd... well, Merri honestly didn't know what she'd be able to do. The arm twisted up behind her back was rather immobilizing.

Fortunately, she wasn't shoved along very far. Beauchamps brought her to a halt just behind the disturbingly maintained yet somehow still squalid old slave quarters (couldn't gloss over something with that rough a surface).

Brute #1 set down the basket, which was somehow more menacing for sitting closed in the grass pretending to be an innocent picnic hamper. She made the brief, selfish attempt at imagining that she was just on a picnic, thrusting aside the acute sensation of pain shooting through her right hand and left shoulder to focus on the warm sun on her face and the cool grass between her toes. A slight breeze fragrant with the scent of wildflowers. That hamper probably had a bottle of California Red and camembert, crackers and cavi-

LaSalle's defiant outcry evaporated her weak fantasy in an instant. He was struggling fiercely against the two men, each who were nearly twice his size. To say he didn't stand much of a chance was an understatement. But the man wasn't a quitter. He made them work hard, sweat beads glinting on their scarred-up faces in the stupid-happy sunshine as they finally managed to get their captive's wrists locked into a pair of what could only be called 'manacles'. At least, they looked like they'd been designed 200 years ago, although didn't have a spot of rust on them. (Merri had a feeling Monsieur Beauchamps was very meticulous when it came to his possessions... The amount of control he'd waged over them thus far was proof enough of that.)

She didn't notice the odd, rough-hewn post standing like a lone, naked tree several yards away until after she watched LaSalle dig his heals into the ground -a futile endeavor with bare feet on thick sod- and his eyes grow wide. At first she didn't understand. She blamed the dizziness in her head from being smacked around, stabbed and having her shoulder wrenched nearly out of its socket. But the purpose of the naked tree became suddenly very clear as the two henchman forced their prisoner's arms up and hooked the manacle chain over one of half a dozen thick metal spikes driven into the weathered raw wood about 8 or 9 feet up the pole.

He struggled a bit, trying to find his balance on feet he couldn't plant flat on the ground with arms stretched above his head just past the limits of his average height body. And then he was kicking at the post. No, he was trying to find purchase with the soles of his feet, as if he might climb it. And maybe he could've managed it. He was a wiry guy, more muscular and stronger than he looked.

But he was exhausted. She could see it in the sluggish drag on his normally smooth and energetic movements. And it was very quickly too late.

"I think twenty shall suh-fice, Mr. Crawford," Beauchamps said, his voice all 19th century colonel in volubility and commanding tone. And then said as an aside to Merri, "He so rarely gets tuh pract-uhs the skill."

Merri began to struggle in true earnest, no longer caring about dislocating her shoulder, the pain equally intense in her wrenched wrist and awkwardly bent elbow.

"Proceed at yuh lei-zhuh," he said, still as calm as ever despite her struggling. Even as he found her injured free hand with his, grabbed it, forcing his thumb into the bleeding wound and squeezing hard as he forced her forearm up her back a little further, causing white pain to stab through her shoulder. It wasn't dislocated yet, she didn't think, but oh, god- her knees grew weak but she fought to stay standing for the added weight of her legs failing her would surely tear all the muscles and tendons in her shoulder and cause the bone to pop out of joint.

But- but the physical pain wasn't the worst. No. The most painful part wasn't even her own agony yet it stabbed her directly in the heart, made her chest feel so tight that she felt like she couldn't breathe. And then there were fingers twisting in her hair jerking her head up and forcing her to watch as her friend was whipped.

It was a ridiculously dramatic scene, but she supposed that was Beauchamps' style. Why do anything mundane when you had the option for the overdramatic? She couldn't deny that it was extremely effective, _he _was extremely effective at the sinister. And the downright heart wrenching.

Brute #2 was using a bullwhip. She wasn't sure if this was better or worse than the old cat-o-nine-tails, only that the tip of it was snapped with such force at Chris LaSalle's pale, smoothly muscled back that it sliced the flesh open in long red lines. His skin that wasn't being slowly coated in blood was turning an angry pink, like a nasty sunburn all over his back. The crimson stripes also appeared on his arms and the nape of his neck as the man who was proficient but obviously not expert in wielding the horrid instrument sometimes missed his precise target, the expanse of Chris' naked back.

Merri cringed and she thought maybe screamed, begged and pleaded, too. She wasn't sure.

"Con-suh-quences, my de-uh," Beauchamps said easily as if he were watching some boring old polo match or whatever monotonous, pretentious sport wealthy sociopaths 'enjoyed'... Besides physically and mentally torturing people, that was. "Ev'ry act-shuhn has uh re-act-shuhn. Puh-haps now you shall cuhn-sider yuh choices mo-uh care-fuh-ly."

The pressure released on her arm, but that was only because she was begin shoved forcefully to the ground, collapsing entirely when her injured hand refused to catch her weight. Under other circumstances, Merri would've wondered why he'd let go of her. Under other circumstances, she would've responded by immediately attacking the bastard. But she'd tried that already. And she was outnumbered. But unlike those thoughts she might have had under other circumstances, there was only one thought in her head at that moment.

She ran to her friend.

The whip cracked again, catching her bicep with a sharp stinging blow. It had probably cut her flesh open, but she didn't even try to stop and look. She was too busy throwing herself at her bloodied friend who was now hanging from the whipping post like a butchered animal, all limp and reeking of blood. He grunted as her body hit his with some force (she had sprinted to him as soon as she'd pushed herself up of the ground). It must've stung like a bitch to have her front pressed up against the open wounds, but it meant his flesh couldn't be torn open any further. Hell, maybe the white cotton dress now sticky and hot sandwiched between his back and her breasts would help stop the bleeding. She'd immediately snaked her arms around his chest, pushing up onto the very tips of her toes to cover as much of his body as she could. He wasn't a large man, and she was thankful she could shield so much of him as she could as she clung hard to him.

"Boss?" One of the Brutes asked, and Merri finally noticed another slash of that terrible whip hadn't come. She'd startled and confused them with her unexpected act. Even knowing it hurt him, she squeezed LaSalle harder, anticipating giant paws grabbing her and trying to pry her off from her friend. But they didn't come either.

"Pro-ceed, Mistuh Crawford" Beauchamps sounded unperturbed by the whole scenario. Maybe it's what he wanted. That idea angered her. But at the same time, she didn't care. Not if it meant sparing Chris one more injury. "Miss Meredith uh-pparently wants the rest huh-self."

The first blow of the whip caught her by surprise. It was the single most painful thing she'd ever experienced. Like being cut and shot at the same time. It stung like being slashed with a knife, but it burned like being struck with significant force. She definitely flinched and cried out.

"Leggo a'me!" LaSalle's voice was strained but firm. She managed to swallow the scream for the second and third strikes, focusing her attention on keeping hold of the man now squirming, trying to shake her off. The fourth and fifth lashes were somehow worse, perhaps because the nerves in the flesh of her back were already flaring with pain. Or maybe it was the fact that the layer of cotton fabric had somewhat cushioned the cutting blows until the dress had been torn to shreds like her friend's naked back.

"Please, Mere. Leggo!" He was sounding desperate now, but she was just as desperate not to let him get hurt anymore. So she took the remaining lashes of the 20 that Beauchamps had ordered, slumping a little when her eight were over. How had she let LaSalle take a full 11 of them before she'd interfered, catching the twelfth with her arm? How hadn't she done everything possible to stop him being hurt to so terribly?

"Keep goin', Mistuh Crawford," Beauchamps' tone was icily placid. And her insides knotted in terrified anticipation, which was shortly followed by the searing pain of another lash of the whip slicing through her flesh. She buried her face, muffled her scream against LaSalle's shoulder and when the next strike came, she unintentionally bit into the naked skin, tasting the saltiness of him as she tried not to cry out in pain.

"Stop!" LaSalle shouted above the blood pounding in her ears, the pain buzzing in her head. "Stop it! I'll tell ya what ya wanna know! Just stop hurtin' her!"

And no further pain came.

"No," she pleaded desperately into his ear. "Don't..."

And then Beauchamps was there, his face disturbingly close to hers and LaSalle's. Her friend had turned slightly, as much as he could, to face their tormentor, but -god forgive her- she'd buried her own face into Chris' sweat-coated neck, not wanting to face the world, face reality. The pain was insane. All she wanted was some morphine and sweet unconsciousness. But something in her kept her clinging to her friend's perspiring, bleeding, trembling body. As if he were her only lifeline. She would die if she let go.

"Where is the ev-uh-dence bein' kept, Mistuh LaSalle?"

_Fuck you, asshole! _Merri thought fiercely. She said, "Don't tell him, Chris."

"I hafta, Mere." There was something in her partner's tone. Something that would be unrecognizable to anyone who didn't know the man extremely well... It woke the part of her brain that had fled into hiding under the onslaught of fear and physical agony. "It's the only way he's gonna stop hurtin' ya."

"Yeah, because he'll just kill us instead," she said, still mulling over how easily her friend had seemed to give in. Not that she would ever think him capable of being indifferent to her being tortured. But this wasn't like him, especially when he got all stubborn and defiant. Maybe the agony of being whipped had gone to his head, too.

"Now, now. No need tuh ah-gue," Beauchamps said, crocodile grin spread across his not-unattractive face. It disgusted her. And she had half a mind to bury her face against her friend's pungent skin once more in a desperate attempt to shut out the world. Except... LaSalle was up to something.

"You ah both cuh-rect. Neither of you will be huht any fuh-thuh if you disclose the in-fuh-mation I desi-uh. You will have the day or so required tuh confuhm the infuhmation is cuh-rect, which will be spent as my honuhed guests."

Merri wanted to lash out at him, punch the smug grin off the asshole's face. Except, she was terrified of what would happen if she let go of LaSalle. Both for herself and for her friend. She'd probably collapse completely to the ground. And then the Brutes would set in on them both, per whatever twisted amusement of their psychopathic boss.

"Un-fuh-tunately, unless the pair of you can see yuh way tuh joinin' my cuh-lection, you will have tuh be disposed of."

"Exactly why we shouldn't help you," Merri said, glaring at Beauchamps and instinctively squeezing her partner tighter, loosening her hold when he flinched.

"I believe yuh partnuh sees the ben-uh-fit in such a deal, Miss Meredith."

She couldn't see Chris' face, but she could picture it perfectly; the reluctant acceptance, the way his tongue would appear to wet his lips, his brow furrowing before he nodded in acquiescence.

"So... what'll it be Mistuh LaSalle?"

Suddenly, those large meat-hooks she'd been dreading earlier clamped onto her shoulders and hips, began to pull at her, and god help her (please, God!) she was so weak with pain and exhaustion and emotional distress that the two brutes peeled her off her partner as easily as she might peel a banana.

"No!" She screamed and struggled, fresh shocks of pain blossoming all over her back as she thrashed and the raw, bleeding wounds rubbed against one of her captor's chests. One of the bear-sized mitts caught her throat and forced her to still.

She watched, breathing heavily as words were exchanged, too quietly for her to hear above the pounding sound of her heart beating, which at the moment seemed more akin to a roaring ocean in her ears. And then Brute #1 was fetching a notepad and pen to hand to his master, who started making notes as the federal agent spilled everything he wanted to hear.

And she cursed Chris LaSalle, even as her heart ached at the sight of him more hanging than standing there, arms still trussed up above his head, red gashes on his arms and the nape of his neck, his back a sheet of crimson that glittered in the sunlight, the rest of his skin gone deathly pale. She wanted to cry for his pain. And murder him herself.

Because didn't he realize he'd just murdered them both?

* * *

**A/N: Has LaSalle lost it? Could he just no longer stand Brody's suffering? Or does he have some sort of plan in mind? ;-) **


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note: Many of you by now know my writing, and my tendency to thrive on the aftermath of violence. So no surprise here, this chapter is longer than the previous one.**

* * *

LaSalle was shoved through the door ahead of her. How he managed to catch her when one of the goons pushed her through next was beyond her. She could barely stand. And he must have been hurting just as badly, worse even, weakened by dehydration and starvation and hyperthermia. Bleeding and in pain.

They stood together, supporting one another in the rather large white-tiled space as the door was locked behind them. This Great House had an awful lot of rooms that locked from the outside. Did its normal, actual guests never get suspicious? Then again, given its master, she doubted whether the 'normal' variety of guests were ever invited to the isolated plantation.

"You got an owuh tuh clean yuhselves up!" A voice announced from the other side of the door.

Great. They were expected to clean themselves up? Lick their wounds? Make themselves presentable for another round of civilized threats, which would doubtless be followed by another round of gruesome torture? Or Death? God, she fucking hated the South.

"Pardon?" her partner asked, and she realized she must have mumbled that last part aloud.

"No offense, LaSalle," she said. "But I'm really starting to despise the whole 'Southern Hospitality' thing."

"This ain't hospit'ble," he said, his face was still twisted in a grimace, but there was a little flare of playfulness in his blue eyes. How the hell his facetiousness could still be going strong, Merri didn't even begin to understand.

She hurt. Her back felt like it was on goddamn fire and her legs felt like her bones had turned to jell-o.

"What the hell were you thinking anyway?" she said, remembering that she was mad at him. Mostly, she was... Well, she didn't know. Relieved that he wasn't dead? Heartbroken for his suffering? Terrified they wouldn't make it out alive? Exhausted?

Yes. That one. Exhausted. She slumped a little, the fight leaving her altogether as she selfishly let the strong grip of his hands on her hips hold her up.

He leaned in close, as if he were about to kiss her neck, which made her feel... She didn't know what. But his lips, chapped and dry didn't scrape against her sensitive skin. (She probably wouldn't have felt it anyway. Her nervous system was entirely overloaded.)

"They're prob'bly listenin'." His breathy whisper tickled her skin. Okay, so she could feel the warmth of him despite the screaming pain in her back and her injured hand. He pulled away slightly, said in a more normal voice. "I had ta tell 'em, Merri. I couldn't let ya get hurt no more."

"What did you tell them?" she asked, looking into his dark blue eyes, which were surprisingly clear despite the tremendous amount of pain he had to be in.

"God forgive me. I tole 'em 'bout the evidence lock-up at the office."

Evidence lock-up? Current cases tended to be strewn amongst their desks, some parts with Sebastian and Loretta at the Jefferson Parish Morgue and some with Patton Plame. Sometimes they held pieces of evidence, shoved it into a closet on the premises. But when the case was closed, it went to a federal storage facility. She had no idea where the evidence Beauchamps was after, in the near-decade old Vice case and the recent murder of Sidney Vincent would be... Likely spread across Pride's rooms... Pinned up on the wall. The forensics aspects in Sebastian's lab.

"You shouldn't have done that," Merri said, playing along, but also genuinely worried. "Pride will try to stop them."

He grinned at her. Actually grinned! Blood loss. The man was suffering from trauma and blood loss.

Only... Why hadn't Pride found them yet? Because he didn't have any good leads, such as henchmen sent directly from Beauchamps, breaking into the NCIS office and trying to steal evidence.

Hell, Merri had no idea how she'd gone from arresting a former CI of Chris' and well, fainting, outside of a dive bar to the heart of a Gothic Novel. So how would Pride, even as good an investigator as he was, ever be able to track them down?

No. Sending the man a clue, even a dangerous one, had been the only move they could make, as confined and controlled and _abused _as they were. Oh, god, it fucking _hurt_.

She fought the wince of pain from showing on her face as she stared into her partner's blue, blue eyes. Their steady, pure and dark hue somehow comforted her. She gave him a smile and a nod, acknowledging his tactic to (hopefully) get a message out to their boss.

And then, still clinging to his biceps for support, she craned her neck to look around. Maybe they could get out of here on their own? He seemed to have a similar thought, turning them like they were in the midst of a slow dance so she could survey the room, see the extremely narrow window running along the upper part of the wall like a piece of crown molding, letting light in, but a permanent fixture, too narrow to squeeze through even if they managed to break the thick glass out. They might be able to use the shards as a weapon though. For being so sparsely furnished, there were a number of things they might be able to utilize in the white-tiled bathroom. There was a large shower stall, with a frosted glass sliding door, which perhaps could be shattered (if she or LaSalle first wrapped their arm in one of the fluffy white towels laid out in a stack by the shower before using an elbow on the glass). The whole far corner of the room was a large Jacuzzi tub, with metal fixtures that might pack a whollop if they could be torn free of their mounting. Same with the sink fixtures. The vanity mirror could be broken. The towel rod could be pried from the wall and used as a baton. And if that toilet tank lid wasn't fixed down... Merri wasn't proud of it, but she'd employed one in self defense before. The heavy slab of porcelain had knocked her attacker out cold.

The problem was that she wasn't sure she was in any shape to wield, or even acquire any of those weapons. And neither was LaSalle. His body had begun to tremble, vibrating softly against hers, and she tightened her grip on his arms, afraid he'd pass out and fall to the floor, hitting his head on the hard tile. And then she'd be on her own again, fighting an impossible battle to stay alive, to keep them both alive.

"We best tend ta our wounds first," LaSalle said, glancing down at their feet. Merri followed his gaze, saw the blood oozing onto the too-white porcelain tile. And then she was being gently propelled backward and pushed down to sit on the toilet lid. She watched a man she'd never seen waver before this awful day reach out, place a hand on the sink to steady himself, as he closed his eyes and continued to tremble. Merri had a feeling he was going into shock. Beside the stack of towels there was a plastic white box with a large red cross on the top. A first aid kit. Slipping onto her knees, she crawled the few feet to pull it into her lap and open it, examine the contents briefly. Nothing sharp. Precut gauze, antiseptic fluid, antibiotic ointment and medical tape. Maybe enough gauze to bandage both of their shredded backs, but not clean them as well. She ground her teeth as a wave of pain threatened to pull a moan from her throat. Thinking about it seemed to make it worse. Thankfully, LaSalle was still facing her, and she didn't directly have to see his formerly smooth back turned to bloody pulp.

But she'd have to face it soon. It wasn't like he could tend to his own back. And she'd need him to clean and dress hers. She closed her eyes, took a breath, willed the nausea down. But if she was going to vomit, now would be the time.

LaSalle was still looking incredibly pale. He'd fallen to his knees upon the plush white rug -now stained with crimson spots (suck it, Beauchamps and your stupid white bathroom). She rushed to his side, turned the sink faucet on cold, cupped some to spill on the back of his neck. And then she brought the next palmful to his lips.

"Drink."

She used her command voice. Well, as 'command' as she could muster at the moment. The man who under normal circumstances would tease or make some other sort of comment about drinking water out of her hand and being 'coddled' simply complied.

"Slow," she said as he gulped greedily, obviously so desperate for the cool liquid that she wasn't all that surprised when his tongue darted out and lapped at the palm of her left hand. It tickled and... Well, today was a day for a lot of firsts _and_ confusing thoughts about her friend. Not to mention, the sort of intimacy necessitated to survive such a degrading ordeal at the hands of a sadistic sociopath as Beauchamps.

She worried about giving him too much to drink and making his shrunken, dehydrated stomach throw it back up, but really, she couldn't hold that much water in her hand anyway. And after a few handfuls, he slumped back onto his haunches, licking his lips and looking somewhat sated. Merri drank a little water out of the faucet herself, feeling thirsty. Probably due to blood loss.

Well, they'd put it off long enough, she supposed. And apparently LaSalle had come to the same conclusion.

"Bath or shower?" he asked, not quite able to meet her eyes. They both knew what they'd have to do next. A nice, warm, bubble-filled bath sounded like heaven, except for the part where she'd be leaning her destroyed back against the side of the tub. Also, waiting for the giant tub to fill with enough water so that they didn't have to sit in a little pool of bloody water, naked and shivering-

"Shower, I think," she said, studying his pale face, the pink in his cheeks standing out in stark contrast. How could he give a shit about propriety at this point? She'd already seen him buckass naked, curled up in a sad little ball, pathetically shaking and whimpering. If it was for her sake, he'd have to get over it fast, because she needed him. To patch her up. And he needed her. But, "Can you stand?"

He nodded, pushing himself up onto his feet, but not without staggering a little. And then he was offering her a hand up, which she definitely needed. Her legs protested, every muscle fiber in her body aching with exhaustion or outright pain. Uncertain what would be worse, hot water or cold, she settled on adjusting the shower spray to a lukewarm setting. It was an oddly soothing sound as it pattered against the tile and the glass door, like rain.

She tried to pull the dress off as LaSalle pushed the blood-soaked linen pants off his hips, revealing- she averted her eyes, turning away. The dress refused to slip off as easily as it slipped onto her body, and she winced when a gentle tug at the fabric pulled at her tender back. It was sickeningly stuck to her clotting wounds. It was going to hurt, reopen the cuts the whip had made if she ripped it off like a band-aid. But she couldn't even do that, not with one good hand.

"Here." She felt LaSalle's hands, rough and warm on her shoulders, and surprisingly calming. "Lemme get it."

There was another small tugging sensation that made her wince. He was tenderly picking at the fabric, probing.

"'s stuck ta ya good." His voice was quiet, and oddly detached. She supposed she couldn't blame him. If she let herself fully feel every emotion and thought, she'd have a mental breakdown right then and there, collapse to the cold, blood smeared tile floor, curl up in a ball and sob hysterically. "'s gonna hurt."

She took a deep breath. "Just do it." Adding, "_Please, Chris,_" as an afterthought.

"Alright."

She felt the cool air on her thighs as leaned down, gripped the hem of her dress and began to lift it. She raised her arms so he could pull it off her in one fell swoop. And screamed when he tore the dress from her raw back, her back stinging as fiercely as it had just after the whipping had stopped. And she knew it would only get worse, when she asked the man to scrub the sweat and dirt and any other foreign particles from the slashes.

Merri congratulated herself on remaining upright. But LaSalle's hands flying to her waist to catch her probably helped with that. They were just as rough yet reassuring as when he'd placed them on her hips earlier, over the dress, and on her shoulders. But somehow they felt warmer, skin on skin, even a little tingly.

"I better do ya first." She felt heat flush through her, an instinctual reaction of her naked body in proximity with that of a warm, leanly muscled man speaking soft and dirty innuendo into her ear. Only he hadn't meant it that way. And how could she possibly be having even the faintest arousal response when she was in so much pain, and so fatigued? Her body and brain were both going haywire.

Yup. That was the problem.

"Yer already bleeding agin'," he offered further explanation as they stepped into the shower, both subconsciously avoiding direct contact with the spray of water. She turned, caught his worried blue eyes staring into her, the tips of his ears an intense pink. She wondered that he had enough blood to rise to the surface of his unusually pale skin. "Yer stronger than me, Mere. I don't think I'll be much good fer anythin' after ya scrub the gunk off my back."

She doubted that.

Wetting her lips, she nervously swallowed. She'd face the pain she'd have to cause him to cleanse his wounds when she got to that part. And not a moment before. She nodded, and then pushed past him, accidentally brushing the tips of her breasts against his chest. Her brain was in a partial stupor, and judging spatial quantities was apparently low on its priority functions list. She tried to ignore the small whimper he'd made at the contact, pulling the glass door open again and shivering as the cooler air outside of the shower stall hit her.

"Washcloths," Merri explained before her friend could collect himself and ask. Grabbing two of the little squares of white terrycloth that would shortly have to be thrown into the garbage, she returned to the shower, handing them to the naked man she willed her eyes not to study. Instead she focused on his face, watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, caught his dark blue eyes and tried to assuage his obvious anxiety about what was going to happen next.

"I don't want to die from an infection, Chris," she said, choosing fact and faux hardassery, hoping it would calm him and give him a steady hand to get the job done quick. "So do a good job, okay?

She turned away from him, first enjoying the feel of the shower spray on her face and then wincing as the water hit her bleeding, aching back. She placed her good hand against the tile wall for support, her breasts and stomach turning to gooseflesh, bereft of the warm torrent of water, which flowed over her back. She did her best not to cry out as the cloth was applied to her torn up flesh, at first so tentatively, it just wasn't going to get the job done and then -thank god- with efficient purpose.

It hurt worse than the whipping. Okay, that was probably untrue. But that pain had already faded into memory, and this stinging, stabbing, burning agony was fresh, current, made her whimper and silent tears stream down her cheeks. A steadying hand settled on her as the other one washed her wounds. The strong hand felt large on her hip. It anchored her against the tide of pain threatening to rip her away.

"Done."

She sighed at the sound of her friend's voice, sagging a little with relief before she straightened, turned to find herself encircled in her partner's arms. His blue eyes were tormented, his expression equally mournful.

"Thank you." She managed to croak out the words, because he needed to hear them, needed to know she didn't blame him for any of the pain inflicted upon her person. She gave him a wan smile. "Your turn."

He swallowed again, nodded, and they did the awkward dance of sliding by one another once more, this time she had to fight not to react as his -_gulp-_ male parts brushed against her hip bone, making her wonder how he seemed to be partially aroused, making her hate herself for even thinking about it. Because wasn't there some defiant part of her own anatomy inappropriately aroused by the naked, wet intimacy?

It wasn't a conscious choice. And the sooner they got this whole horrendous experience over with, the better.

Chris LaSalle had assumed the position, backside towards her placing his palms flat against the opposite wall of tile as she'd done for support. She didn't have to worry about ordering her eyes not to roam. The sickening sight of his shredded back was enough to hold her entire focus. It made her heart ache. For the pain that she'd witnessed him endure, for the pain she was about to cause him, for the despoilment of something so beautiful as this man's nicely formed body. Okay, so she had looked before. Looked on more than one occasion. And had _felt _a little, too, when they'd wound up in close proximity for one reason or the other. And when she cuddled up to him while he sat hypothermic in a freezer. God, was that just a matter of days ago? A little over a week, now?

Some of the blood was washed away beneath the lukewarm torrent of water, snaking down his firm ass and legs, swirling down the drain, like rusty reaching tendrils of some alien creature. The bulk of the horrid thing still remained latched onto her friend's back, dark red clots and gouts of crimson. Bile bit at the back of her throat. She fought it down. Because he'd done this for her. And she could do it for him, too.

Shakily she pressed the washcloth to his torn-up back, felt him flinch beneath the contact, gripped the wad of fabric tighter and began to scrub methodically at the man's back. He whimpered and moaned as she washed the clotted blood and dirt and sweat away, working her way down his back. It was awkward and a bit clumsy with her uninjured left hand. And her right hand was so sore and swollen that she didn't dare try to use it to comfort or soothe him as he'd done her. She hit a particularly nasty looking gash right in the middle of his back, over his spine and he cried out in pain. His knees buckled, but she managed to hastily wrap her arms around his waist, hugging him awkwardly from behind, catching him as he doubled over. His firm round buttocks squirmed against her belly as he panted, fighting the wave of agony that she'd sent thrumming through his body with her careless touch.

And then he was straightening to his full height once again, his hands finding her wrists and gently prying her arms from around his torso.

" 'm okay." He didn't sound okay. She needed to finish this and quick.

"Almost done." Her voice was strained by the knot of anxiety in her throat over causing her friend such pain. But she had to finish cleaning up his wounds. Once they were both bandaged up, they could focus on getting out of whatever circle of hell they'd been dragged into. She swiped the now pinkish-orange stained cloth over his lower back, getting the clotted ridge of blood that had pooled along the waistband of the ruined linen pants. The freshly opened wounds were oozing blood onto his pale skin, so she gave a last gentle wipe over his entire back, revealing red tiger stripes marring his once smooth, unmarred back.

"Done." She dropped the blood-soaked cloth in a sopping pile next to its mate on the tile floor as LaSalle turned the shower off and stepped out before her, wrapping a clean (not for long, his back still bleeding) white fluffy towel around his waist. She shouldn't stare, she knew. She shouldn't even look. But she was too weary to order her brain not to do so.

She'd looked.

And he was still beautiful, she decided, even though he'd lost a little bit of his already lean muscle mass. It wasn't as if his ribs were sticking out, though. He was solidly built and nicely proportioned. Undeniably male. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the urge to ask him to hold her, the appeal of curling up in his still strong arms. She was a heterosexual woman. And why fight the fact? She found male strength comforting in a primal sort of way, despite never wanting to be seen as 'the weaker sex', not believing in that outdated chauvinistic bullshit.

When she opened her eyes, her partner was holding a towel up for her, his face averted. She stepped into it, the plush terrycloth feeling unbelievably soft against her sensitive skin as it enveloped her. It stung as it hit her back however, and when LaSalle's hand released the corners, she let it fall away, not caring that her backside was left exposed as she clutched the towel to her chest.

He laid another towel out on the blood-stained rug, with one rolled up like a pillow and invited her to lay down with a gesture of his hand. She laid herself out, prone, felt him drape the towel over her naked buttocks as if she were about to receive a massage. Only her back was crisscrossed with welts and bleeding gashes. And it was going to hurt when he bandaged her up.

It wasn't as bad as she thought, her fatigued body having been further softened by the warm spray of the shower, the delicate touch of his fingers on her skin... she was lulled into a sort of stupor. Even the pain, a steady stinging ache seemed pleasant in comparison to the intense agony it had been.

"Merri," he was gently shaking her shoulder. She must have drifted off. "Yer done. Mebbe ya can get in a few winks after ya patch my back up?"

"Oh, sorry," she pushed herself up to a sitting position before her kneeling friend, rubbed at her eyes that didn't want to stay open, blinked, caught him staring, dragged the blood-splotched towel up to cover her chest, breaking his momentary lapse in gentlemanly behavior. He blushed fiercely as he tore his eyes aware from her breasts. She didn't blame him. How could she? She'd stared, too. Neither of them were in their right minds, had enough energy to marshal their every thought.

She wrapped the towel around herself, tucking it in securely at her chest, wincing only slightly against the pressure on her tender back. But rather than assuming the position, LaSalle stayed kneeling before her, his gaze once again dropping from her face. She wasn't still showing him anything, was she? She checked herself, but her parts were all covered, and then his larger hand was engulfing one of hers. She winced as he lifted her injured hand, turned it over to examine the palm, the dark red puncture and the swollen tissue surrounding it.

"Better take care of this," he said, reaching for an antiseptic wipe packet. It stung like a bitch, but he was right to make sure her hand had extra disinfectant. Having complications, potentially losing the use of her right hand... The thought was utterly terrifying. Swathed in gauze and tape, LaSalle playfully brought it to his lips, placing a mock kiss on the back of her hand, his eyes somehow light-hearted. Maybe focusing on her had allowed him to cram down his own pain into a dark hole. But now it was his turn. She ordered him to lay down on his stomach as she had and proceeded to tend to her friend's wounds as he'd done hers.

Taking a clean towel, Merri carefully dabbed the fresh blood off her friend's shredded back. She bit at her lip as she concentrated on picking out the little white fuzzies left behind, the fibers sticking to the raw gashes tacky with congealing blood and lymph fluid. She squeezed an ample amount of antibiotic ointment onto his back, rolling the small tube up as if it were toothpaste, squeezing every last drop out. And then she proceeded to spread it over the entire expanse of his back, a little awkwardly with just her left hand. The lovely musculature was still in tact, the gashes tearing through skin but not too deeply into the tissue below. Except for near his spine in that one place that when she'd touched it, he'd nearly collapsed to the shower floor. She didn't see bone, though, so it wasn't quite a medical emergency. Not like a vertebrae had been exposed or anything. But the skin and muscle tissue was thinner over the spine, and she couldn't imagine how painful that lash had been. After there was a thick, glossy layer of ointment coating his back, she began to tear open the sterile packets of large gauze squares, covering his back with a patchwork and then using the medical tape to secure it down, severing it with her teeth for the lack of cutting implement.

She smoothed the last piece of tape across his lower back, so low, her finger dipped as she pressed the adhesive into the dimples just above the swell of his buttocks. Of course, Chris LaSalle would have fricken Venusian dimples. Adorable bastard. Adorable, sweet, strong _bastard_. He'd only been trying to help a friend. How did he deserve this? She hastily swiped the tears from her cheeks.

"Done," she said, trying to collect herself. There was a stack of what appeared to be folded clothing next to the pile of towels. She pawed through it, set the familiar looking white cotton dress aside with a roll of her eyes. There was a pair of white linen pants, just like the ones sitting in a pile near the shower stall, stained a crimson now turning brown as the blood dried. There was also a white cotton t-shirt. What was with the white? Maybe the psychotic owner of this hellish place enjoyed seeing the blood stains stand out in stark contrast. No drop went unnoticed. She glanced around the bathroom as she absently handed Chris the clean clothes. They'd certainly done a number on the white-tiled, white-walled, white-furnished place. Blood was spattered everywhere. A novice to crime scenes would decidedly think someone had been murdered in the room, the culprit attempting to clean up with the plethora of white towels stained a rusty pink. Merri knew there wasn't nearly enough blood for a gruesome murder. But terrible violence certainly was illustrated by the remnants strewn about the place.

After dressing, they stood awkwardly amongst the debris-strewn floor. She wondered if it was similar to what orderlies had to face when cleaning up after a frantic surgery in the operating room. LaSalle licked his lips. They still looked very chapped, so Merri reached over and turned the tap to cold. She was thirsty herself. Every movement made her acutely aware of the adhesive tape stuck to her skin, and the tight, hot sensation of her still raw wounds. They took turns drinking from the faucet until sated. Some of the color seemed to be coming back to her friend's face. He'd been so disturbingly pale, she'd feared he'd been going into shock.

She really just wanted to find a clean place of floor to curl up with one of the unsoiled towels as a pillow. But when she woke, they'd still be trapped in this place, at the mercy of a sociopath and his bloodthirsty henchmen. Maybe he'd send them away, after Pride. Damn. That wasn't entirely good. But at least the senior agent slept with a gun on his nightstand. Or hell, maybe even under his pillow. He didn't have to curb his caution for his wife's sensibilities anymore. At least she hoped that was the case.

Then again, she sort of wanted to be the one to put one of those thick-skulled goon's lights out herself. But with what... The toilet tank lid drew her attention. It did make such a satisfying crack when employed against a human skull. But sadly, she doubted she had the arm strength at the moment. Also, only one good hand. Maybe that towel bar...? She stepped in close to her friend, his blue eyes going wide as he looked curiously at her. She snaked her arms around his neck, leaned in, as he'd done to her earlier, as if she might kiss his neck.

"Do you think we could pry that bar off the wall?" she whispered. "Or maybe we could smash the shower door?"

"An' then what?" His nose brushed against the sensitive skin below her ear, making goose bumps break out along the nape of her neck and down her back, which felt odd, since most of that skin was still inflamed.

_And then what?! _"And then we have something to fight with."

"It's too dangerous, Mere." His hands were gripping her arms. "I won't see ya hurt no more."

"Then what do you propose we do?" Her voice was no longer a whisper, but she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Chris LaSalle, stubborn as the day was long, tough, a fighter... didn't want to fight for their freedom, for their lives? He just wanted to "Wait for Pride to somehow rescue us. Hope our _benevolent _host keeps us alive that long?"

He pulled away, looked into her with dark blue eyes gone intense.

"I dunno," he said, staring at her, into her. "I jus' can't lose another friend."

She felt the tears welling up again. Her feelings were all over the place. She was exhausted and hurting, both inside and out, physically and emotionally. What could she possibly say to that? That he was being silly, ridiculously melodramatic? She couldn't insult him, not when he was obviously even more raw and vulnerable than she was.

But they needed to get out of this hell.

Somehow, they needed to find the strength to fight. But before she could even think of a pep talk to give her partner, there was a loud click that echoed through the large tiled bathroom, and the door swung open.

* * *

**A/N: What's in store for our favorite pair of agents? Will they have the strength and resolve to fight their way out? Or will they have to resort to using their cunning and wits? Or just give in to their abused bodies and minds and hope for rescue?**

**A/N2: I know. It seems like I'm dragging this out. But the climax is on the horizon. I'd say as early as the next chapter even… ;-) And hopefully, all of your questions will be answered. This fic is Brody-POV-centric, which is why we have no idea what Pride and the team are up to. But just maybe she'll find out soon…**


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Note: I apologize profusely for the delay. I was torn between options for where this story should go next and how it should end. But now that I've made a decision, there's no reason that this shouldn't be updated weekly (hopefully) and completed soon.**

* * *

It was the maid, Pauline, at the bathroom door.

They could totally run for it.

If they could've actually managed to run. Or to even walk swiftly. As it was, Merri thought she'd only manage a crawl if it weren't for her partner's solid frame propping her up. Well, also leaning against her. They probably looked like a pair of cards someone was trying to stand upright to build a flimsy house. It only worked because they were in precise balance. Breathe on them, and well...

Merri swayed a little when LaSalle stepped forward (and bless him) slightly in front of her, as if the diminutive maid might be a threat.

Of course, everything in this hell was probably a threat. Just in different levels of disguise. Yet, Merri was pretty certain the woman was only bad in as much that she ignored all of the evil that surrounded her. She posed no direct threat to them.

She placed a hand on her friend's shoulder, avoiding his freshly wounded, cleaned and bandaged back.

"She's not going to hurt us," Merri said, locking eyes with the maid who gave her a brief nod. Whether it was acknowledgement of gratitude for her intervention, Merri didn't know. But the woman certainly couldn't be afraid of what Chris LaSalle might do. Not in his current state.

"Come with me," the maid said, turning and proceeding down the hallway. Just assuming they would follow. Where else would they go, after all?

Where else, indeed?

They wouldn't get far in their present state. Certainly not back to civilization. With the way LaSalle sagged against her when she carefully slid an arm around his waist to support him... Well, she could see herself wasting what little energy left in her trying to drag him along, ending with them both dying in the middle of the woods or a field under the hot sun. They had at least fed her in the past 12 hours, but it wouldn't be enough.

And that was if they even managed to get out of the house and off the estate before Beauchamps sicked one of his vicious bulldogs on them. Although, the large men probably couldn't move nearly as fast as either LaSalle or herself in good condition... They were nowhere near good condition. The two massive goons could probably out lope them. Not to mention Merri had an inkling there were probably other 'hired hands' on the property.

LaSalle didn't protest, didn't even hesitate when Merri took a step to follow the maid and sent them stumbling and lurching unsteadily down the hall behind her neatly kept little figure in grey.

The grand house was a maze, but Merri recognized the door the smaller woman stopped in front of. It was both welcome and exasperating beyond measure. Pauline opened the door, gestured for them to enter the room. This time she had to tug at her partner to get him moving. She couldn't blame his reluctance to enter an unknown room in the hell hole.

But it was empty when they shuffled inside, just like she'd left it on her last summons earlier that day. Had it really only been that morning?

Well, it wasn't exactly as she'd left it. For the maid had tidied it up.

"What happened to dinner?" LaSalle asked, his tone sarcastic. It was heartening to hear despite the obvious fatigue in him, as he collapsed with a groan onto the bed on his stomach.

The click of the door locking echoed through the room. Brody thought it a poor choice to put their bloodied selves back into the predominately white bedroom. But damn, LaSalle looked comfortable sinking into the fluffy duvet.

"Looks like dinner was take-out," she said, spying the paper plate with what looked like fluffernutter sandwiches sitting on the bedside table. "Or more like a packed lunch."

LaSalle turned his head to face her, still lying prone on the bed, his blue eyes dark and clear but his eyelids drooping some.

"Hungry?" Merri held up one of the sandwiches, two pieces of wheat bread oozing peanut butter and fluff. She thought he might refuse, beyond the point where hunger could compel him over exhaustion, but her friend pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed with some grunting and groaning. But when he held out a hand in request, she tore off only a small piece of the sandwich to hand to him.

He just nodded and nibbled at it. She handed him a water bottle. It was sealed, but potentially could still have been tampered with. At this point, she just couldn't care. Maybe the food and drink was poisoned. But maybe it wasn't. And if it wasn't... They needed it; him more than her.

She continued to feed him little bites of sandwich, taking a few herself. He didn't object to being treated like a baby bird. She wasn't sure if it was a good sign or not. Finally he said he'd had enough in a barely audible voice, slurred with weariness and laid back down on his stomach, sighing in relief.

There was nothing else Merri could do but plop down on the other side of the bed, shifting a little on her stomach, trying to find a position where her breasts didn't feel so crushed beneath her body, pulling one leg up beneath her and turning her face to watch the already unconscious Chris LaSalle. She placed a hand on his arm, afraid that if she closed her eyes and opened them again, he'd disappear on her.

Sleep took her quickly.

* * *

"Wake up, Brody. Ya gotta wake up. C'mon."

Oh, god. Everything hurt. Her head. Hand. Leg. Back. Ugh! Every muscle fiber in her body. It seemed to take every ounce of strength in her to open her eyes. Her friend's face filled her vision, blue gaze bright and intense.

"What?" She pushed herself up feebly, her arms feeling so very weak. And then she heard it. There was obviously a considerable ruckus going on in the large plantation home. Shouts and crashing and... gunfire! "Pride?"

LaSalle broke into his big lopsided, boyish grin, nodding his head eagerly.

"Has-ta be," he said. "Who else would organize a raid on such short notice just to save our asses?"

Brody felt a surge of energy, the prospect of being free of this place, of taking down the man who'd abused and tortured and _played _with them lifting her spirits. Or maybe it was the unavoidable rise in adrenaline from hearing gunfire and a call to action.

"Wha'd'ya say, Agent Brody?" LaSalle picked up the little vanity stool and smashed it against the wall, tugging a couple of its wooden legs free. "Wanna get outta here?"

She returned his smile. She couldn't help it. And not just because it was so damned infectious and charming. Because, heaven help her, the prospect of committing some violence in the name of justice was immensely appealing. She took the stool leg he offered her. It wasn't of baseball bat or club quality. But the hardwood spindle was of a size to a police baton. And she knew how to use those. She tested the weight and balance of it in her hands, looked up to see Chris LaSalle battling to keep his mouth set in a neutral expression as he raised a judgmental eyebrow at her.

"You up for this?" she asked, carefully eyeing her battered friend's abused body. He seemed to have been fortified by the fluffernutter, water and some sleep. He grinned an uncharacteristically wolfish grin. The predatory look in his eye made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Even when they were about to bust down a door, the man maintained his cool. Well, she knew he got amped up with the adrenaline. But there was never any maliciousness in it. This time, however, he looked liked he'd be pleased to crack someone's head open. Specifically, she guessed the man who'd laid both of their backs open... Or the one who had ordered it, as well as his old partner's death and likely that of the CI they'd been picking up for questioning when first abducted.

Merri stepped aside, inviting him to do the honors of busting through the door. They ended up having to take turns smashing a hole through one of the panels near the door handle so that they could reach through and unlock it, since the door opened inward. If the noise was heard, it went unheeded. Likely due to the melee in other parts of the house. As far as distractions went, a shootout with law enforcement was a good one.

Merri peeked out, LaSalle pressing himself against her side as he leaned to see out into the hall as well. She could swear his body was physically humming with excitement. At the very least she could feel the tension in his muscles.

"Clear," he whispered, his tone going all business. Actually, it was a comfort. This, this was familiar territory, securing a premises with her partner. They exchanged a look, a nod, and then moved out into the hallway, heading towards the sounds of the fight, falling into the rhythm that was second nature to them now.

The bulk of the action seemed to be happening downstairs. At least, the upstairs halls they carefully negotiated were vacant. But the din of the raid-battle-melee had died off into an eerie sort of silence. Merri couldn't help but wonder if it was Pride? Having taking care of the baddies, wouldn't he be calling out for them? Unless... She shoved the impossible thought a side as they approached a widening in the hallway.

LaSalle placed his back to the wall, wincing a little at the contact. Her back was more a vague itching and burning sensation, but she'd noticed the dark spots where his wounds had bled through the layers of gauze, not yet soaking the white t-shirt but noticeable beneath the fabric.

He surreptitiously glanced around the corner. And this time it was Merri's turn to press herself up to her partner's side, leaning into him to peek around the wall and down the big central staircase. There didn't seem to be any signs of life. She exchanged a look with her partner, questions and answers asked and given wordlessly. She nodded and then he darted across to the other side of the wide staircase, using an ornate balustrade for cover.

She nearly laughed. He may have been starved about ten pounds skinnier, but he wasn't _that_ thin. And it would've been comical if she wasn't so terrified and excited.

He shook his head when she raised her eyebrows in question, meaning he didn't see anyone. And then she tilted her head in the direction of the staircase and he nodded. They stepped out in unison, but before they could sprint down the stairs to meet whatever fate in the main hall, Merri was tugged backward, knocking her out of balance and sending her tumbling hard to the floor. She looked up to see LaSalle being manhandled by Mr. Crawford. Or was it Mr. Wright? What did it matter which?

It only mattered that the bastard had somehow snuck up on them and currently had LaSalle by the throat as he struggled against his attacker. But the agent was nowhere near his normal fighting trim. Having lost his wooden baton, he kicked out, striking the brute in the shin and kneecap, but the man-beast didn't seem bothered by the blows. Well, that was untrue. Apparently the smaller man's resistance was an annoyance and after a couple seconds, Mr. Crawford (or Wright) walked his victim to the edge of the stairs.

Seeing what he intended to do to her friend, Merri rushed the muscular goon, swinging her makeshift baton at his head. It struck his skull with a good _crack _but failed to stop the brute from dropping his captive to tumble backwards down the stairs.

"Chris!" Merri screamed her partner's name but she couldn't see how bad he had fallen. Her immediate attention was entirely claimed by the bastard that had just choked and then thrown her friend down the stairs. He whirled on her and she swung the stool leg at him again, hoping the screw that was sticking out in the end would catch him this time, puncturing that thick skull of his.

Not so slow as his oafish appearance implied.

The muscular goon fended off the blow by grabbing the baton . The screw sunk into his meaty forearm but he seemed no more bothered by it than an insect bite. He wrenched the weapon from her hand and tossed it aside before lunging for her. She didn't have time to back out of reach. He caught her by the throat, as he'd done with LaSalle and-

Oh, shit.

Whereas she'd interrupted his focus and the brute had only been able to drop LaSalle down the stairs, he had the freedom of movement to give her more of a toss. The fact that she managed to gouge some deep bloody grooves into his bare arms with her fingernails was little consolation when her back hit the edge of a hardwood step and she continued to tumble down until she hit a wall with concussion inducing _thud_.

Everything went black. Black and a dull ache that grew more and more intense. And then her partner's voice...

"Wake up, Brody. Ya gotta wake up. C'mon."

Oh, god. Everything hurt. Her head. Hand. Leg. Back. Ugh! Every muscle fiber in her body. It seemed to take every ounce of strength in her to open her eyes. Her friend's face filled her vision, blue gaze bright and intense.

She blinked a few times, taking in her surroundings. She was... in a hospital?

* * *

**A/N: Looks like Merri missed out on something…? But what exactly? ;-)**


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note: What happened to Merri…?**

**CAVEAT: I fudged things a little, medical-wise. (But this is just fiction.) See Follow-up for details.**

* * *

Merri Brody felt like hell, but she was so damned relieved to see her partner's handsome face that she practically leapt out of the hospital bed, throwing herself at him. As her arms wrapped about him she felt him stiffen in her embrace.

_His back. _A thought told her. But that wasn't quite right. God, she couldn't seem to think straight, _remember_ clearly.

Rather than hug her in return, her friend carefully untangled himself from her and gently pushed her back to lying down on the narrow cot. (Not a difficult feat considering she felt like she had all the strength of a weak kitten.) She couldn't help but feel hurt by the cold behavior, but she was too happy...to be... free... and safe? She shook her head. She felt so _hazy_.

_Concussion_. A thought told her.

"M' happy ta see ya too, Brody." She tried to focus better on Chris LaSalle. It was so hard to concentrate. He looked healthy. And relieved, she supposed, but not like she felt... free... and safe?

Pride was here, too, standing beside Chris, looking down at her with lines of worry and a little relief etched into his face.

"Well, did we get him?" Her voice was a raspy croak. And the two men gave her a bewildered look, so she frowned, adding, "Beauchamps."

LaSalle's blue eyes went wide. Pride's brow furrowed. He opened his mouth as if about to say something when a nurse bustled into the room and genially pushed the two men out of the way to begin checking Merri's vitals.

"Good to see you awake, Agent Brody," the nurse said. Did she know the woman? She seemed familiar, yet Merri couldn't focus her eyes enough to read her nametag.

_Pauline_. A thought told her.

"Looking good," the nurse said, patting her on the arm and giving her a sunny smile. "I'm going to go fetch the doctor, okay?"

Her fellow agents crowded back in around her bedside, studying her with worried and bemused expressions.

"You were, sayin' somethin' about, uh- Beauchamps?" Pride asked in his usual neutral tone and strange broken cadence.

"Did you get him?" Merri asked, feeling more confused than she ever had in her life.

"How do you know about 'im?" She shook her head. It made the room spin enough that she had to lay back into the pillow to still herself and the world.

_Beauchamps tortured us_, A thought told her.

"He's the one responsible for this," she said, her voice cracking so that LaSalle hastily poured her a cup of water and held it to her lips. She placed her hands on the plastic cup, but he didn't let go. And was right not to trust her weak fingers to hold it. She took a few sips and gave him a grateful smile before he turned to set it back on the side table, his ears turning a little pink despite his otherwise rather detached behavior. For some reason she felt the significant urge to wrap her arms around him and soothe him.

Pride shook his head, looking as confused by what she was saying as she felt by both of the men's responses. But before she could press them for an explanation, the nurse returned, towing a thin middle-aged woman with pretty if oddly sharp looking features. She was obviously the doctor, even though Merri couldn't quite focus enough to read the name embroidered on her white lab coat. But she had a stethoscope draped around her neck and an air of authority that sent the two seasoned federal agents skittering out of her way like field mice.

"How are you feeling, Merri?" she asked, leaning over her and beginning to examine her head to toe. The pen light she shined into her eyes was a sharp stabbing pain directly to her poor abused brain, but the doctor didn't appear to find anything wrong with her pupilary response.

"Um... confused," Merri said as the woman picked up her right hand and checked the ugly looking bruise on the back.

_Stabbed_, a thought told her. Merri frowned, wrinkling her nose.

"That's perfectly normal after what you've gone through," the doctor said, giving her a perfect bedside manner smile. She turned to Pride and LaSalle, who stood off to the side, watching the proceedings with expressions of mingled worry and relief still plastered on their faces. "I'll have to ask you both to leave while I finish my examination of Agent Brody."

After they left, the doctor asked her turn over on her side so she could check her back. She noted her vitals, drew some blood that the nurse whisked away, and then settled down on the edge of Merri's hospital bed.

"What do you remember?" she asked.

"I'm... I'm not sure anymore," Merri said, trying to grasp at memories that seemed as slippery as soap. No, worse than soap. Bits of shampoo floating in water. Impossible to grab. Only with keen patience, could one scoop them up in both hands. And still, parts were lost.

"You developed a bad infection in the laceration to your thigh. You're partner brought you in after you passed out while making an arrest."

Merri nodded. She remembered blacking out in the parking lot. But hadn't she woken up somewhere else? Not in the hospital. It was like an intense dream. Or her real memories were so vague that they all seemed equally valid. It was hard to pick out one over the other and hang onto it as reality.

"That was six days ago."

What?! She had no memory of six whole days. Okay. She had a memory. But it was too freaky to be real, wasn't it? It seemed so real. She remembered the heat of the unforgiving sun, the stab of pain in her hand, her back on fire with agony, the feel of LaSalle's hands on her arms, the musky male scent of his skin as he lay beside her in bed.

"Was I in a coma?" It seemed the obvious conclusion, since she had no recollection of being hospitalized for the past week.

"Not as such." The doctor gave her a sympathetic smile. As if the woman had ever lost a week's time because she'd been so sick with-

"What was it, anyway?" Merri asked.

"You developed a severe Staph infection. Multi-drug resistant. It moved into your blood stream. Your fever was dangerously high much of the time, which was why you were so out of it."

"Multi-drug resistant?" That was the scariest sort of medical pronouncement in Merri's opinion. Something potentially untreatable.

Sensing her alarm, the doctor patted her knee. "It took us several days to find an effective antibiotic cocktail, during which you suffered a blown IV line..." (that explained the bruise on the back of her hand) "...and an allergic reaction to one of the antibiotics. The rash on your back seems to have cleared up, however. And the last three blood tests have shown a steady reduction in the infection."

The woman squeezed her knee. "It was close a couple times there, but your friends said you' were a fighter. And they were right."

Merri took back any ill-will she felt towards the doctor. She obviously cared about her patients.

"What's the prognosis, then?" Merri asked. She'd have been more nervous if her emotional self hadn't started shutting things down to protect her frantic brain. Everything was a complete mess. She'd never been so disoriented in her life. Not even after Emily died.

"You'll probably be released tomorrow or the next day, if the infection continues to show signs of clearing up," the doctor said, getting to her feet and assuming a more professional tone. "But you'll have to continue the course of antibiotics for another five weeks. A nurse will show you how to give yourself the injections and get you set up."

Ugh. Great.

Suddenly, she took Merri's hand in her own, warmer gloved one, looking all soft again.

"And I promise you the doctor who improperly treated your initial injury will be facing a review board. This was a dangerous and likely avoidable mistake. I'm sorry you had to go through this."

"Thank you," Merri said, unsure of what else to say. Maybe her mind had created some sort of bizarre escapist fantasy, but she apparently hadn't been able to truly flee the pain her body had suffered. Her feverish mind had tried to interpret her physical agony in the most bizarre way. (Maybe she read too many gothic novels... what the hell?!)

"Shall I send your friends back in?" she asked. And Merri nodded. She wanted to see them. She wanted the normalcy of discussing a case with them, or what Laurel was up to, Sebastian's latest conspiracy theory, whether Loretta finally took back that fawning (too much for the medical examiner's tastes) boyfriend of hers.

Honestly, she wanted to see LaSalle again. Fever-dream or no, the anxiety over his well-being felt real and profound. She wasn't one for premonitions or such supernatural bullshit. But being a law enforcement officer for nearly half her life had made her a firm believer in 'gut feelings'. And she had a concern for her partner and friend that ran bone deep.

When they came back in, Pride was wearing his serious face, almost-but-not-quite 'interrogator' in somberness. LaSalle was looking sheepish. (And god help her, as boyishly handsome as ever.) Whatever her mind had done to her, why had it felt the need to torture her friend, too, was beyond her. Maybe she held some deep-seeded subconscious malice towards the poor guy. Or maybe she was trying to warn herself, her gut telling her he needed protection, help, _saving_.

"What do you know about Beauchamps?" Pride asked. Merri shifted in the uncomfortable hospital bed... The fabric of the gown and the sheets were scratchy against her grimy skin. As soon as she could stand up on her own (she felt like that might not be a possibility for at least another half a day), she was going to take a shower and wash away the fever sweat.

"Just... Just a name from my fever-dream," she said, sounding not at all certain. God, the vestiges of those memories seemed just as real, maybe more, than the reality of lying in a hospital, weak and uncomfortable and feeling... feeling completely out-of-balance, like she might burst into tears or laughter or scream. Or throw herself at her partner who wasn't quite looking at her, almost as if Pride had scolded him. She wasn't sure where the desire to hug the younger man had come from, but god, it was ridiculously urgent.

"I know things, are a little... Fuzzy for you right, now." Pride's strict expression softened, and the concern returned to his warm eyes. Sometimes, Merri could swear the man was born in 'father mode'. She couldn't see him ever being any other sort of man than one who gathered up a brood and watched over them. She believed the term was 'fiercely protective'.

"But you're sure, you've never heard, that name before your, uh, fever-dreams?"

Merri chewed her lip, laying her head back against the equally-scratchy (and lumpy) pillow. She tried to focus her stupid scattered brain. No. Beauchamps was a villain. That's all she knew.

"No," she said, opening her eyes again, watching as Pride turned to LaSalle with a confused look. "What's going on?"

The older man nudged his younger friend, who took a step forward, casting his eyes at his feet and shifting his weight from one side to the other. Merri was sure she'd never seen the confident agent look so timid. He even mumbled when he spoke.

"Ya prob'ly know the name 'cause I was talkin' ta ya 'bout the case when ya were outta it," he said.

That made sense, she supposed. Especially if, "This Beauchamps is your suspect?"

"We think he's the one behind Sidney's frame-up an' murder." The timidity left LaSalle's demeanor as the conversation switched to more comfortable topics than his feelings, the fact that he'd cared enough about his partner to not only sit with her, but also talk to her while she was unconscious. "He's a sociopath if ya ask me."

Damn. Her friend probably would've never thought his telling her about his investigation would fuel the most disturbing dreams to accompany her fever aches and pains.

"Don't care 'bout nothin' but himself." LaSalle had become all worked up now. "Playin' wi' people's lives as if they were games fer his amusement. Or insignificant, li'l-"

"Butterflies?" Merri suggested and her partner grew silent once more. She wondered if it was a turn of phrase he'd used before, when she was sleeping and he was venting about the case.

"We best leave Brody to get her rest," Pride said, putting a hand on his young friend's shoulder. "We'll catch her up when she's back on her feet."

He nodded to Merri and she gave him a confident smile, which was a complete fiction. Confident was the last thing she felt. Out of place, weak, _befuddled_, anxious... All described her current state far better than 'cool and collected federal agent'. But that's what her boys needed to see in order to leave her side and get back to work. So that's what she gave them. She slumped back into the hospital bed when the door closed behind them.

Well, didn't quite close, for the nurse came bustling back in, carrying a tray of -_oh, lovely, why don't they just poison her_\- hospital food. But she supposed it would be the first step in getting her strength back, towards feeling more herself.

"Got you some dinner, Agent Brody," the nurse announced, setting up a tray in front of Merri and helping her sit up. But she didn't leave. Instead she settled in, making Merri feel like an infant as the friendly health care professional took up the spoon to feed her. Unfortunately, the woman's assumption that the patient didn't have the strength to lift her hand to her mouth more than once was correct.

It was still embarrassing.

But not as embarrassing as the conversation the nurse started up.

"I'm surprised your boyfriend there left so soon."

"What?" Merri frowned. "I don't have a boyfriend."

She couldn't mean LaSalle or Pride.

"The younger one with the intense eyes and the little boy grin."

Okay. She definitely meant LaSalle. Merri shook her head.

"He's just my partner," she said, before taking the spoonful of cherry jell-o the nurse offered her. It was sweet and cool and although she'd never been one for gelatin products, it was _heaven _as she swallowed and it slid down her dry throat.

"Does he know that?" said Nurse- It was 'Pauline', now that Merri was able to focus enough to read her nametag. The woman was grinning. Obviously, she found the federal agents amusing. Well, at least the charming Bama-Born one. "Because he never left your side, except when we made him."

Merri felt her eyes grow wide. She knew Chris LaSalle was loyal, soft-hearted and a good friend. But the nurse had to be exaggerating.

"Well, he didn't come in for the first couple of days, after dropping you off and looking all kinds of frantic."

There. Exaggeration. The woman had simply read too many romance novels.

"But once he showed up, he practically had to be dragged away." Nurse Pauline seemed to get a little misty-eyed. Definitely a hopeless romantic. "He sat by your bed, holding your hand and talking to you softly in that charming accent of his."

Charming. That was one word for it. (Okay, so Merri did find his ridiculous backwoods Southern accent adorable, and a little sexy.)

Nurse Pauline lowered her voice, whispering as if she was imparting some secret or scandalous information as she offered Merri the last spoonful of jell-o.

"I had to kick him out of your bed last night."

What?! Merri's eyes practically popped out of her head. This woman was a liar. Because Chris LaSalle's deeply ingrained gentlemanly manners (perhaps beaten into him by his mother yielding a wooden spoon) would never permit him to do such a thing as crawl into her hospital bed without her explicit permission. (Or even then.)

"God's Honest Truth." Nurse Pauline crossed her heart. And then gave Merri a rather lascivious wink, that made her blush. "He was all curled up against your side, sound asleep. After watching him spend the last few nights in that uncomfortable chair, I didn't really want to wake him. But rules are rules."

Nah. Couldn't have happened. Only...

Warmth. The feel of a calloused hand on her bare arm as she slept. A familiar musky male scent. _LaSalle._

Merri laid back into the pillows, closing her eyes as Nurse Pauline tidied up the remains of her dinner.

She felt more confused than ever.

* * *

**A/N: I know, I know. I went with the 'It's all a dream' cop out. But it just worked so well. And the Gothic portion of this fic was rather incongruous with the beginning. So bringing it back to that tone for the end, but hopefully maintaining some sort of bond between Brody and LaSalle.**

**A/N2: Merri would've been pretty much quarantined had she developed a severe MRSA infection (LaSalle might've been allowed to see her, but not touch her until the infection was under control. And there would be epic amounts of hand sanitizing in and out of her room). But that's not conducive to my plot/bonding schemes, so… Sorry for the inaccuracy. ;-)**


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